r 


CALIFORNIA 


• 


TO  UNIVERSITY  LIWIAKY 

UN'VFRSTY  OF  CAMPANIA,  SAN  DIEGO 

LA  JOr  -        LrOKNIA 


RIVERSIDE  ESSAYS 

EDITED  BY 

ADA  L.  F.  SNELL 

ASSOCIATE   PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH 
MOUNT   HOLYOKE  COLLEGE 


bp  3tta  i.  f . 


THE  AMERICAN  MIND  AND  AMERICAN  IDEALISM.  By 
Bliss  Perry.  40  cents. 

UNIVERSITY  SUBJECTS.  By  John  Henry  Newman.  40 
cents. 

STUDIES  IN  NATURE  AND  LITERATURE.  By  John  Bur- 
roughs. 40  cents. 

PROMOTING  GOOD  CITIZENSHIP.  By  James  Bryce.  40 
cents 

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Other  titles  in  preparation 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON       Nsw  YORK       CHICAGO 


Hitjersiae  literature  £>erie* 


STUDIES  IN  NATURE 
AND  LITERATURE 

BY 

':   JOHN  BURROUGHS 


BOSTON  NEW   YORK   CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
(fflbe  ttitoetfi be  prc»rf  Cambribge 


COPYRIGHT,   1875,   1889,   1894,   1902,   TQ03,   1908,  AND   1917 
BY  JOHN    BURROUGHS 

ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


R.  L.  S.  226 


Cfje  ftibersfte  JJress 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSS' 
U    .    S   .    A 


PREFACE 

MR.  BURROUGHS  has  written  of  himself  in 
an  "Egotistical  Chapter"  so  revealingly  and 
withal  so  concisely  that  it  makes  the  most  fit- 
ting introduction  to  this  little  volume  of  selections 
from  the  works  of  our  greatest  literary  naturalist. 
The  choosing  of  material  from  fifteen  by  no  means 
slender  volumes  has  been  a  difficult  task;  how  many 
favorites  one  would  like  to  include,  such  as  "The 
Hunt  for  the  Nightingale,"  "The  Apple,"  "The 
Grist  of  the  Gods"  —  but  one  must  not  make  a 
catalogue  in  a  preface!  It  is  hoped,  however,  that 
the  material  which  has  been  selected  and  is  here 
presented  may  serv*e  to  increase  the  interest  of  stu- 
dents in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Burroughs,  and  that  it 
may  encourage  them  to  read  and  express  on  their 
own  account  the  world  which  he  has  made  known 
to  us  as  a  place  abounding  in  miracles. 

ADA  L.  F.  SNELL. 


CONTENTS 

AH  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 1 

THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 19 

BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE 38 

BIRD  COURTSHIP 46 

THE  SNOW- WALKERS 66 

AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS 62 

THE  DIVINE  SOIL 69 

STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 82 

SUGGESTIVENESS      .    . 101 


AN   EGOTISTICAL   CHAPTER1 

A  FEW  years  ago  the  editor  of  a  popular  maga- 
JI\.  zine  inveigled  a  good  many  people,  myself 
among  the  number,  into  writing  about  themselves 
and  their  experiences  in  life.  None  of  us,  I  imagine, 
needed  very  much  persuading,  for  as  a  rule  there 
is  no  subject  which  a  man  or  a  woman  is  more  ready 
or  willing  to  talk  about  than  himself  or  herself. 
One's  ailments  are  always  a  favorite  subject;  next 
to  that,  one's  good  luck  or  ill  luck  in  his  last  under- 
taking; then  one's  experiences,  one's  likes  and  dis- 
likes; and  lastly,  self -analysis  and  criticism.  And 
it  has  been  said  that  a  man  "is  never  so  sure  to 
please  as  when  he  writes  of  himself  with  good  faith, 
and  without  affectation."  Ay,  there's  the  rub  ;  to 
write  of  one's  self  without  affectation!  A  false  note 
of  this  kind  is  fatal  to  the  interest  and  value  of  the 
criticism. 

In  a  certain  sense,  a  man  of  the  literary  or  artistic 
temperament  never  portrays  or  writes  of  anything 
but  himself ;  that  is,  he  gives  us  things  as  seen 
through  the  intimate  personal  medium  which  he 
himself  is.  All  things  reflect  his  hue  and  quality. 

1  From  Indoor  Studies. 


2  AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

This  is  the  bane  of  science,  but  it  is  the  life  of 
literature.  I  have  probably  unwittingly  written 
myself  in  my  books  more  fully  and  frankly  than  I 
ever  can  by  any  direct  confession  and  criticism ;  but 
the  latter  may  throw  some  side  light  at  least,  and, 
on  looking  over  what  I  wrote  for  the  editor  above 
referred  to,  I  find  that  portions  of  it  possess  a  cer- 
tain interest  and  value  to  myself,  and  therefore  I 
trust  may  not  seem  entirely  amiss  to  my  reader. 

If  a  man  is  not  born  into  the  environment  best 
suited  to  him,  he,  as  a  rule,  casts  about  him  until 
he  finds  such  environment.  My  own  surroundings 
and  connections  have  been  mainly  of  the  unliterary 
kind.  I  was  born  of  and  among  people  who  neither 
read  books  nor  cared  for  them,  and  my  closest  asso- 
ciations since  have  been  with  those  whose  minds 
have  been  alien  to  literature  and  art.  My  unlit- 
erary environment  has  doubtless  been  best  suited 
to  me.  Probably  what  little  freshness  and  primal 
sweetness  my  books  contain  is  owing  to  this  circum- 
stance. Constant  intercourse  with  bookish  men 
and  literary  circles  I  think  would  have  dwarfed  or 
killed  my  literary  faculty.  This  perpetual  rubbing 
of  heads  together,  as  in  the  literary  clubs,  seems  to 
result  in  literary  sterility.  In  my  own  case,  at  least, 
what  I  most  needed  was  what  I  had,  —  a  few  books 
and  plenty  of  real  things.  I  never  had  any  apti- 
tude for  scholarly  attainments;  my  verbal  or  artifi- 
cial memory,  so  to  speak,  was  poor,  but  my  mind 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER  3 

always  had  a  certain  magnetic  or  adhesive  quality 
for  things  that  were  proper  to  it  and  that  belonged 
to  me. 

I  early  took  pleasure  in  trying  to  express  myself 
on  paper,  probably  in  my  sixteenth  or  seventeenth 
year.  In  my  reading  I  was  attracted  by  everything 
of  the  essay  kind.  In  the  libraries  and  bookstores 
I  was  on  the  lookout  for  books  of  essays.  And  I 
wanted  the  essay  to  start,  not  in  a  casual  and  incon- 
sequential way,  but  the  first  sentence  must  be  a 
formal  enunciation  of  a  principle.  I  bought  the 
whole  of  Dr.  Johnson's  works  at  a  second-hand 
bookstore  in  New  York,  because,  on  looking  into 
them,  I  found  his  essays  appeared  to  be  of  solid 
essay-stuff  from  beginning  to  end.  I  passed  by 
Montaigne's  Essays  at  the  same  time,  because  they 
had  a  personal  and  gossipy  look.  Almost  my  first 
literary  attempts  were  moral  reflections,  somewhat 
in  the  Johnsonian  style.  I  lived  on  the  "Ram- 
bler "  and  the  "  Idler  "  all  one  year,  and  tried  to  pro- 
duce something  of  my  own  in  similar  form.  As  a 
youth  I  was  a  philosopher ;  as  a  young  man  I  was 
an  Emersonian ;  as  a  middle-aged  man  I  am  a  liter- 
ary naturalist;  but  always  have  I  been  an  essayist. 

It  was  while  I  was  at  school,  in  my  nineteenth 
year,  that  I  saw  my  first  author;  and  I  distinctly 
remember  with  what  emotion  I  gazed  upon  him, 
and  followed  him  in  the  twilight,  keeping  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street.  He  was  of  little  account,  — 


4  AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

a  man  who  had  failed  as  a  lawyer,  and  then  had 
written  a  history  of  Poland,  which  I  have  never 
heard  of  since  that  time ;  but  to  me  he  was  the 
embodiment  of  the  august  spirit  of  authorship,  and 
I  looked  upon  him  with  more  reverence  and  enthu- 
siasm than  I  had  ever  looked  before  upon  any  man. 
I  do  not  think  I  could  have  approached  and  spoken 
to  him  on  any  consideration.  I  cannot  at  this  date 
divine  why  I  should  have  stood  in  such  worshipful 
fear  and  awe  of  this  obscure  individual,  but  I  sup- 
pose it  was  the  instinctive  tribute  of  a  timid  and 
imaginative  youth  to  a  power  which  he  was  just 
beginning  vaguely  to  see,  —  the  power  of  letters. 

It  was  at  about  this  time  that  I  first  saw  my  own 
thoughts  in  print,  —  a  communication  of  some  kind 
to  a  little  country  paper  published  in  an  adjoining 
town.  In  my  twenty-second  or  twenty-third  year, 
I  began  to  send  rude  and  crude  essays  to  the  maga- 
zines and  to  certain  New  York  weekly  papers,  but 
they  came  back  again  pretty  promptly.  I  wrote  on 
such  subjects  as  "  Revolutions,"  "  A  Man  and  his 
Times,"  "  Genius,"  "  Individuality."  At  this  period 
of  my  life  I  was  much  indebted  to  Whipple,  whose 
style,  as  it  appears  in  his  earlier  essays  and  in  the 
thin  volume  of  lectures  published  by  Ticknor,  Reed 
&  Fields  about  1853,  is,  in  my  judgment,  much 
better  than  in  his  later  writings.  It  was  never  a 
good  style,  not  at  all  magnetic  or  penetrating,  but 
it  was  clear  and  direct,  and,  to  my  mind  at  that 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER  5 

period,  stimulating.  Higginson  had  just  begun  to 
publish  his  polished  essays  in  the  "Atlantic,"  and 
I  found  much  help  in  them  also.  They  were  a 
little  cold,  but  they  had  the  quality  which  belongs 
to  the  work  of  a  man  who  looks  upon  literature 
as  a  fine  art.  My  mind  had  already  begun  to  turn 
to  outdoor  themes,  and  Higginson  gave  me  a  good 
send-off  in  this  direction.  But  the  master-enchanter 
of  this  period  of  my  life  and  of  many  following 
years  was  Emerson.  While  at  school,  in  my  nine- 
teenth year,  in  my  search  for  essays  I  had  carried 
to  my  room  one  volume  of  his,  but  I  could  do 
nothing  with  it.  What,  indeed,  could  a  Johnso- 
nian youth  make  of  Emerson  ?  A  year  or  so  later 
I  again  opened  one  of  his  books  in  a  Chicago  book- 
store, and  was  so  taken  with  the  first  taste  of  it  that 
I  then  and  there  purchased  the  three  volumes,  — the 
"  Essays  "  and  the  "  Miscellanies."  All  that  sum- 
mer I  fed  upon  them  and  steeped  myself  in  them: 
so  that  when,  a  year  or  two  afterwards,  I  wrote  an 
essay  on  "  Expression  "  and  sent  it  to  the  "  Atlan- 
tic," it  was  so  Emersonian  that  the  editor  thought 
some  one  was  trying  to  palm  off  on  him  an  early 
essay  of  Emerson's  which  he  had  not  seen.  Satis- 
fying himself  that  Emerson  had  published  no  such 
paper,  he  printed  it  in  the  November  number  of 
1860.  It  had  not  much  merit.  I  remember  this 
sentence,  which  may  contain  some  truth  aptly  put: 
"  Dr.  Johnson's  periods  act  like  a  lever  of  the  third 


6  AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

kind:  the  power  applied  always  exceeds  the  weight 
raised." 

It  was  mainly  to  break  the  spell  of  Emerson's 
influence  and  to  get  upon  ground  of  my  own  that  I 
took  to  writing  upon  outdoor  themes.  I  wrote  half 
a  dozen  or  more  sketches  upon  all  sorts  of  open-air 
subjects,  which  were  published  in  the  New  York 
"  Leader."  The  woods,  the  soil,  the  waters,  helped 
to  draw  out  the  pungent  Emersonian  flavor  and 
restore  me  to  my  proper  atmosphere.  But  to  this 
day  I  am  aware  that  a  suggestion  of  Emerson's 
manner  often  crops  out  in  my  writings.  His  mind 
was  the  firmer,  harder  substance,  and  was  bound 
to  leave  its  mark  upon  my  own.  But,  in  any  case, 
my  debt  to  him  is  great.  He  helped  me  to  better 
literary  expression,  he  quickened  my  perception  of 
the  beautiful,  he  stimulated  and  fertilized  my  reli- 
gious nature.  Unless  one  is  naturally  more  or  less 
both  of  a  religious  and  of  a  poetic  turn,  the  writings 
of  such  men  as  Emerson  and  Carlyle  are  mainly  lost 
upon  him.  Two  thirds  of  the  force  of  these  writers, 
at  least,  is  directed  into  these  channels.  It  is  the 
quality  of  their  genius,  rather  than  the  scope  and 
push  of  their  minds,  that  endears  them  to  us.  They 
quicken  the  conscience  and  stimulate  the  character 
as  well  as  correct  the  taste.  They  are  not  the  spokes- 
men of  science  or  of  the  reason,  but  of  the  soul. 

About  this  period  I  fell  in  with  Thoreau's  "  Wai- 
den,"  but  I  am  not  conscious  of  any  great  debt  to 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER  7 

Thoreau :  I  had  begun  to  write  upon  outdoor  themes 
before  his  books  fell  into  my  hands,  but  he  undoubt- 
edly helped  confirm  me  in  my  own  direction.  He 
was  the  intellectual  child  of  Emerson,  but  added 
a  certain  crispness  and  pungency,  as  of  wild  roots 
and  herbs,  to  the  urbane  philosophy  of  his  great 
neighbor.  But  Thoreau  had  one  trait  which  I 
always  envied  him,  namely,  his  indifference  to 
human  beings.  He  seems  to  have  been  as  insensible 
to  people  as  he  was  open  and  hospitable  to  nature. 
It  probably  gave  him  more  pleasure  to  open  his 
door  to  a  woodchuck  than  to  a  man. 

Let  me  confess  that  I  am  too  conscious  of  per- 
sons, —  feel  them  too  much,  defer  to  them  too 
much,  and  try  too  hard  to  adapt  myself  to  them. 
Emerson  says,  "  A  great  man  is  coming  to  dine  with 
me:  I  do  not  wish  to  please  him,  I  wish  that  he 
should  wish  to  please  me."  I  should  be  sure  to 
overdo  the  matter  in  trying  to  please  the  great  man: 
more  than  that,  his  presence  would  probably  take 
away  my  appetite  for  my  dinner. 

In  speaking  of  the  men  who  have  influenced  me, 
or  to  whom  I  owe  the  greatest  debt,  let  me  finish 
the  list  here.  I  was  not  born  out  of  time,  but  in 
good  time.  The  men  I  seemed  to  need  most  were 
nearly  all  my  contemporaries;  the  ideas  and  influ- 
ences which  address  themselves  to  me  the  most 
directly  and  forcibly  have  been  abundantly  current 
in  my  time.  Hence  I  owe,  or  seem  to  owe,  more 


8  AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

to  contemporary  authors  than  to  the  men  of  the 
past.  I  have  lived  in  the  present  time,  in  the  pre- 
sent hour,  and  have  invested  myself  in  the  objects 
nearest  at  hand.  Besides  the  writers  I  have  men- 
tioned, I  am  conscious  of  owing  a  debt  to  Whitman, 
Ruskin,  Arnold,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Ten- 
nyson. To  Whitman  I  owe  a  certain  liberalizing 
influence,  as  well  as  a  lesson  in  patriotism  which 
I  could  have  got  in  the  same  measure  from  no 
other  source.  Whitman  opens  the  doors,  and  opens 
them  wide.  He  pours  a  flood  of  human  sympathy 
which  sets  the  whole  world  afloat.  He  is  a  great 
humanizing  power.  There  is  no  other  personality 
in  literature  that  gives  me  such  a  sense  of  breadth 
and  magnitude  in  the  purely  human  and  personal 
qualities.  His  poems  are  dominated  by  a  sense 
of  a  living,  breathing  man  as  no  other  poems  are. 
This  would  not  recommend  them  to  some  read- 
ers, but  it  recommends  them  to  such  as  I,  who 
value  in  books  perennial  human  qualities  above  all 
things.  To  put  a  great  personality  in  poetry  is  to 
establish  a  living  fountain  of  power,  where  the  jaded 
and  exhausted  race  can  refresh  and  renew  itself. 

To  a  man  in  many  ways  the  opposite  of  Whit- 
man, who  stands  for  an  entirely  different,  almost 
antagonistic,  order  of  ideas,  —  to  wit,  Matthew 
Arnold,  —  I  am  indebted  for  a  lesson  in  clear  think- 
ing and  clean  expression  such  as  I  have  got  from 
no  other.  Arnold's  style  is  probably  the  most  lucid, 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER  9 

the  least  embarrassed  by  anything  false  or  foreign, 
of  that  of  any  writer  living.  His  page  is  as  clear  as 
science  and  as  vital  and  flexible  as  poetry.  Indeed, 
he  affords  a  notable  instance  of  the  cool,  impartial 
scientific  spirit  wedded  to,  or  working  through,  the 
finest  poetic  delicacy  and  sensibility. 

I  have  not  been  deeply  touched  or  moved  by 
any  English  poet  of  this  century  save  Wordsworth. 
Nearly  all  other  poetry  of  nature  is  tame  and  insin- 
cere compared  with  his.  But  my  poetic  sympathies 
are  probably  pretty  narrow.  I  cannot,  for  instance, 
read  Robert  Browning,  except  here  and  there  a 
short  poem.  The  sheer  mechanical  effort  of  read- 
ing him,  of  leaping  and  dodging  and  turning  sharp 
corners  to  overtake  his  meaning,  is  too  much  for 
me.  It  makes  my  mental  bones  ache.  It  is  not 
that  he  is  so  subtile  and  profound,  for  he  is  less  in 
both  these  respects  than  Shakespeare,  but  that  he 
is  so  abrupt  and  elliptical  and  plays  such  fantastic 
tricks  with  syntax.  His  verse  is  like  a  springless 
wagon  on  a  rough  road.  He  is  full  of  bounce  and 
vigor,  but  it  is  of  the  kind  that  bruises  the  flesh 
and  makes  one  bite  his  tongue.  Swinburne  has  lilt 
and  flow  enough,  certainly,  and  yet  I  cannot  read 
him.  He  sickens  me  from  the  opposite  cause  :  I  am 
adrift  in  a  sea  of  melodious  words,  with  never  an 
idea  to  cling  to.  There  is  to  me  something  grew- 
some  and  uncanny  about  Swinburne's  poetry,  like 
the  clammy  and  rapidly-growing  fungi  in  nature. 


10          AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

It  is  not  health,  but  disease;  it  is  not  inspiration, 
but  a  mortal  flux.  The  "Saturday  Review."  jn 
noticing  my  last  volume,  "Signs  and  Seasons," 
intimates  that  I  might  have  found  better  specimens 
of  sea-poetry  to  adorn  the  chapter  called  "A  Salt 
Breeze  "  in  Mr.  Swinburne  than  those  I  have  given, 
and  quotes  the  following  stanzas  from  him  as 
proof:  — 

"Hardly  we  saw  the  high  moon  hanging, 

Heard  hardly  through  the  windy  night, 
Far  waters  ringing,  low  reefs  clanging, 
Under  wan  skies  and  waste  white  light. 

"With  chafe  and  change  of  surges  chiming, 
The  clashing  channels  rocked  and  rang 
Large  music,  wave  to  wild  wave  timing, 
And  all  the  choral  waters  sang." 

Words,  words,  words  !  and  all  struck  with  the  lep- 
rosy of  alliteration.  Such  poetry  would  turn  my 
blood  to  water.  "  Wan  skies  and  waste  white  light," 
—  are  there  ever  any  other  skies  or  any  other  lights 
in  Swinburne  ? 

But  this  last  is  an  ill  wind  which  I  fear  can  blow 
no  good  to  any  one.  I  have  lived  long  enough  to 
know  that  my  own  private  likes  and  dislikes  do  not 
always  turn  out  to  be  the  decrees  of  the  Eternal. 
Some  writers  confirm  one  and  brace  him  where  he 
stands ;  others  give  him  a  lift  forward.  I  am  not 
aware  that  more  than  two  American  writers  have 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER          11 

been  of  the  latter  service  to  me,  —  Emerson  and 
Whitman.  Such  a  spirit  as  Bryant  is  confirmatory. 
I  may  say  the  same  of  Whittier  and  Longfellow. 
£  owe  to  these  men  solace  and  encouragement,  but 
no  new  territory. 

Still,  the  influences  that  shape  one's  life  are  often 
so  subtile  and  remote,  and  of  such  small  beginning, 
that  it  will  not  do  to  be  too  positive  about  these 
matters.  At  any  rate,  self-analysis  is  a  sort  of  back- 
handed work,  and  one  is  lucky  if  he  comes  at  all 
near  the  truth. 

As  such  a  paper  must  of  necessity  be  egotistical, 
let  me  not  flinch  in  any  part  of  my  task  on  that 
account. 

What  little  merit  my  style  has  is  the  result  of 
much  study  and  discipline.  I  have  taught  myself 
always  to  get  down  to  the  quick  of  my  mind  at 
once,  and  not  fumble  about  amid  the  husks  at  the 
surface.  Unless  one  can  give  the  sense  of  vitality 
in  his  pages,  no  mere  verbal  brightness  or  scholarly 
attainments  will  save  him.  In  the  best  writing, 
every  sentence  is  filled  with  the  writer's  living, 
breathing  quality,  just  as  in  the  perfected  honey- 
comb every  cell  is  filled  with  honey.  But  how 
much  empty  comb  there  is  even  in  the  best  books! 
I  wish  to  give  an  account  of  a  bird,  or  a  flower,  or 
of  any  open-air  scene  or  incident.  My  whole  effort 
is  to  see  the  thing  just  as  it  was.  I  ask  myself, 
"  Exactly  how  did  this  thing  strike  my  mind  ?  What 


12          AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

was  prominent  ?  What  was  subordinated  ?  I  have 
been  accused  of  romancing  at  times.  But  it  is  not 
true.  I  set  down  the  thing  exactly  as  it  fell  out. 
People  say,  "  I  do  not  see  what  you  do  when  I  take 
a  walk."  But  for  the  most  part  they  do,  but  the 
fact  as  it  lies  there  in  nature  is  crude  and  raw:  it 
needs  to  be  brought  out,  to  be  passed  through  the 
heart  and  mind  and  presented  in  appropriate  words. 
This  humanizes  it  and  gives  it  an  added  charm  and 
significance.  This,  I  take  it,  is  what  is  meant  by 
idealizing  and  interpreting  nature.  We  do  not  add 
to  or  falsely  color  the  facts:  we  disentangle  them, 
and  invest  them  with  the  magic  of  written  words. 

To  give  anything  like  vitality  to  one's  style,  one 
must  divest  one's  self  of  any  false  or  accidental 
or  factitious  mood  or  feeling,  and  get  down  to  his 
real  self,  and  speak  as  directly  and  sincerely  as  he 
does  about  his  daily  business  or  affairs,  and  with  as 
little  affectation.  One  may  write  from  the  outside 
of  his  mind,  as  it  were,  write  and  write,  glibly  and 
learnedly,  and  make  no  impression;  but  when  one 
speaks  from  real  insight  and  conviction  of  his  own, 
men  are  always  glad  to  hear  him,  whether  they 
agree  with  him  or  not.  So  much  writing  or  speak- 
ing is  like  mere  machine-work,  as  if  you  turned  a 
crank  and  the  piece  or  discourse  came  out.  It  is 
not  the  man's  real  mind,  his  real  experience.  This 
he  does  not  know  how  to  get  at ;  it  has  no  con- 
nection with  his  speaking  or  writing  faculty.  How 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER          13 

rare  are  real  poems,  —  poems  that  spring  from  real 
feeling,  a  real  throb  of  emotion,  and  not  from  a 
mere  surface-itching  of  the  mind  for  literary  expres- 
sion! The  world  is  full  of  "rhyming  parasites," 
as  Milton  called  them.  The  great  mass  of  the  poetry 
of  any  age  is  purely  artificial,  and  has  no  root  in 
real  things.  It  is  a  kind  of  masquerading.  The 
stock  poetic  forms  are  masks  behind  which  the 
poetlings  hide  their  real  poverty  of  thought  and 
feeling.  In  prose  one  has  no  such  factitious  aids; 
here  he  must  stand  upon  his  own  merits;  he  has 
not  the  cloak  of  Milton  or  Tennyson,  or  Spenser, 
to  hide  in. 

It  is,  of  course,  the  young  writer  who  oftenest 
fails  to  speak  his  real  mind,  or  to  speak  from  any 
proper  basis  of  insight  and  conviction.  He  is  car- 
ried away  by  a  fancy,  a  love  of  novelty,  or  an  affec- 
tation of  originality.  The  strange  things,  the  novel 
things,  are  seldom  true.  Look  for  truth  under  your 
feet.  To  be  original,  Carlyle  said,  is  to  be  sincere. 
When  one  is  young,  how  many  discoveries  he 
makes,  —  real  mare's-eggs,  which  by  and  by  turn 
out  to  be  nothing  but  field-pumpkins! 

Men  who,  like  myself,  are  deficient  in  self-asser- 
tion, or  whose  personalities  are  flexible  and  yield- 
ing, make  a  poor  show  in  politics  or  business,  but 
in  certain  other  fields  these  defects  have  their 
advantages.  In  action,  Renan  says,  one  is  weak 
by  his  best  qualities,  —  such,  I  suppose,  as  tender- 


14         AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

ness,  sympathy,  religiousness,  —  and  strong  by 
his  poorer,  or  at  least  his  less  attractive,  qualities. 
But  in  letters  the  reverse  is  probably  true.  How 
many  of  us  owe  our  success  in  this  field  to  qualities 
which  in  a  measure  disqualified  us  for  an  active 
career!  A  late  writer  upon  Carlyle  seeks  to  demon- 
strate that  the  "open  secret  of  his  life"  was  his 
desire  to  take  a  hand  in  the  actual  affairs  of  English 
politics;  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  traits  and 
gifts  which  made  him  such  a  power  in  literature 
—  namely,  his  tremendous  imagination  and  his 
burdened  prophetic  conscience  —  would  have  stood 
in  his  way  in  dealing  with  the  coarse  affairs  of  this 
world. 

In  my  own  case,  what  hinders  me  with  the  world 
helps  me  with  impersonal  nature.  I  do  not  stand 
in  my  own  light.  My  will,  my  personality,  offer 
little  resistance:  they  let  the  shy,  delicate  influences 
pass.  I  can  surrender  myself  to  nature  without 
effort,  but  am  more  or  less  restrained  and  self-con- 
scious in  the  presence  of  my  fellows.  Bird  and 
beast  take  to  me,  and  I  to  them.  I  can  look  in  the 
eye  of  an  ugly  dog  and  win  him,  but  with  an  ugly 
man  I  have  less  success. 

I  have  unmistakably  the  feminine  idiosyncrasy. 
Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  that  my  best  and  most 
enthusiastic  readers  appear  to  be  women.  In  the 
genesis  of  all  my  books,  feeling  goes  a  long  way 
before  intellection.  What  I  feel  I  can  express, 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER          15 

and  only  what  I  feel.  If  I  had  run  after  the  birds 
only  to  write  about  them,  I  never  should  have  writ- 
ten anything  that  any  one  would  have  cared  to  read. 
I  must  write  from  sympathy  and  love,  or  not  at 
all:  I  have  in  no  sort  of  measure  the  gift  of  the 
ready  writer  who  can  turn  his  pen  to  all  sorts  of 
themes ;  or  the  dramatic,  creative  gift  of  the  great 
poets,  which  enables  them  to  get  out  of  themselves 
and  to  present  vividly  and  powerfully  things  entirely 
beyond  the  circle  of  their  own  lives  and  experiences. 
I  go  to  the  woods  to  enjoy  myself,  and  not  to  report 
them  ;  and  if  I  succeed,  the  expedition  may  by 
and  by  bear  fruit  at  my  pen.  When  a  writer  of 
my  limited  range  begins  to  "  make  believe,"  or  to 
go  outside  of  his  experience,  he  betrays  himself  at 
once.  My  success,  such  as  it  is,  has  been  in  put- 
ting my  own  personal  feelings  and  attractions  into 
subjects  of  universal  interest.  I  have  loved  Nature 
no  more  than  thousands  upon  thousands  of  others 
have,  but  my  aim  has  been  not  to  tell  that  love  to 
my  reader,  but  to  tell  it  to  the  trees  and  the  birds 
and  to  let  them  tell  him.  I  think  we  all  like  this 
indirect  way  the  best.  It  will  not  do  in  literature 
to  compliment  Nature  and  make  love  to  her  by 
open  profession  and  declaration  :  you  must  show 
your  love  by  your  deeds  or  your  spirit,  and  by  the 
sincerity  of  your  service  to  her. 

For  my  part,  I  never  can  interview  Nature  in  the 
reporter  fashion :  I  must  camp  and  tramp  with  her 


16          AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

to  get  any  good,  and  what  I  get  I  absorb  through 
my  emotions  rather  than  consciously  gather  through 
my  intellect.  Hence  the  act  of  composition  with 
me  is  a  kind  of  self-exploration  to  see  what  hidden 
stores  my  mind  holds.  If  I  write  upon  a  favorite 
author,  for  instance,  I  do  not  give  my  reader  some- 
thing which  lay  clearly  defined  in  my  mind  when  I 
began  to  write:  I  give  him  what  I  find,  after  closest 
scrutiny,  in  the  subconscious  regions,  —  a  result  as 
unknown  to  me  as  to  him  when  I  began  to  write. 
The  same  with  outdoor  subjects.  I  come  gradually 
to  have  a  feeling  that  I  want  to  write  upon  a  given 
theme,  —  rain,  for  instance,  or  snow,  —  but  what  I 
may  have  to  say  upon  it  is  as  vague  as  the  back- 
ground of  one  of  Millet's  pictures ;  my  hope  is 
entirely  in  the  feeling  or  attraction  which  draws 
my  mind  that  way ;  the  subject  is  congenial,  it 
sticks  to  me;  whenever  it  recurs  to  me,  it  awakens 
as  it  were  a  warm  personal  response. 

Perhaps  this  is  the  experience  of  all  other  writers: 
their  subjects  find  them,  or  bring  the  key  to  their 
hidden  stores.  Great  poets,  like  Milton,  however, 
cast  about  them  and  deliberately  choose  a  theme: 
they  are  not  hampered  by  their  sympathies,  nor 
are  they  prisoners  of  their  own  personalities,  like 
writers  who  depend  upon  this  pack  of  unconscious 
impressions  at  their  back.  An  experience  must 
lie  in  my  mind  a  certain  time  before  I  can  put  it 
on  paper,  —  say  from  three  to  six  months.  If 


AN  EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER          17 

there  is  anything  in  it,  it  will  ripen  and  mellow 
in  that  time.  I  rarely  take  any  notes,  and  I  have 
a  very  poor  memory,  but  rely  upon  the  affinity  of 
my  mind  for  a  certain  order  of  truths  or  observa- 
tions. What  is  mine  will  stick  to  me,  and  what  is 
not  will  drop  off.  When  I  returned  from  England 
after  a  three  months'  visit  in  the  summer  of  1882, 
I  was  conscious  of  having  brought  back  with  me 
a  few  observations  that  I  might  expand  into  two 
or  three  short  essays.  But  when  I  began  to  open 
my  pack,  the  contents  grew  so  upon  my  hands 
that  it  reached  many  times  the  measure  I  at  first 
proposed.  Indeed,  when  I  look  back  over  my  seven 
volumes,  I  wonder  where  they  have  all  come  from. 
I  am  like  a  boy  who  at  the  close  of  the  day  looks 
over  his  string  of  fish  curiously,  not  one  of  which 
did  he  know  of  in  the  morning,  and  every  one  of 
which  came  to  his  hand  from  depths  beyond  his 
ken  by  luck  and  skill  in  fishing.  I  have  often  caught 
my  fish  when  I  least  expected  to,  and  as  often 
my  most  determined  efforts  have  been  entirely 
unavailing. 

It  is  a  wise  injunction,  "  Know  thyself,"  but 
how  hard  to  fulfil  !  This  unconscious  region  in 
one,  this  unconscious  setting  of  the  currents  of  his 
life  in  certain  directions,  —  how  hard  to  know 
that  !  The  influences  of  his  family,  his  race,  his 
times,  his  environment,  are  all  deeper  than  the 
plummet  of  his  self-knowledge  can  reach.  Yet 


18          AN   EGOTISTICAL  CHAPTER 

how  we  admire  the  ready  man,  the  man  who  always 
has  complete  control  of  his  resources,  who  can  speak 
the  right  word  instantly!  My  own  wit  is  always 
belated.  After  the  crisis  is  past,  the  right  word  or 
the  right  sentence  is  pretty  sure  to  appear  and  mock 
me  by  its  tardiness. 

There  is,  no  doubt,  a  great  difference  in  men  with 
reference  to  this  knowledge  and  command  of  their 
own  resources.  Some  writers  seem  to  me  to  be  like 
those  military  states  wherein  every  man  is  num- 
bered, drilled,  and  equipped,  and  ready  for  instant 
service  :  the  whole  male  population  is  a  standing 
army.  Then  there  are  men  of  another  type  who 
have  no  standing  army.  They  are  absorbed  in  mere 
living,  and,  when  the  occasion  requires,  they  have 
to  recruit  their  ideas  slowjy  from  the  vague,  uncer- 
tain masses  in  the  background.  Hence  they  never 
cut  a  brilliant  figure  upon  paper,  though  they  may 
be  capable  of  doing  real  heartfelt  work. 


THE   EXHILARATIONS   OF  THE   ROAD.1 

Afoot  and  light-hearted  I  take  to  the  open  road. 

WALT  WHITMAN. 

OCCASIONALLY  on  the  sidewalk,  amid  the 
dapper,  swiftly  moving,  high-heeled  boots  and 
gaiters,  I  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  naked  human  foot.  /- 
Nimbly  it  scuffs  along,  the  toes  spread,  the  sides 
flatten,  the  heel  protrudes;  it  grasps  the  curbing, 
or  bends  to  the  form  of  the  uneven  surfaces,  —  a 
thing  sensuous  and  alive,  that  seems  to  take  cogni- 
zance of  whatever  it  touches  or  passes.  How  primi- 
tive and  uncivil  it  looks  in  such  company,  —  a  real 
barbarian  in  the  parlor!  We  are  so  unused  to  the 
human  anatomy,  to  simple,  unadorned  nature,  that 
it  looks  a  little  repulsive;  but  it  is  beautiful  for  all 
that.  Though  it  be  a  black  foot  and  an  unwashed 
foot,  it  shall  be  exalted.  It  is  a  thing  of  life  amid 
leather,  a  free  spirit  amid  cramped,  a  wild  bird 
amid  caged,  an  athlete  amid  consumptives.  It  is 
the  symbol  of  my  order,  the  Order  of  Walkers./^ 
That  unhampered,  vitally  playing  piece  of  anatomy 
is  the  type  of  the  pedestrian,  man  returned  to  first 

1  From  Winter  Sunshine, 


20     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

principles,  in  direct  contact  and  intercourse  with 
the  earth  and  the  elements,  his  faculties  unsheathed, 
his  mind  plastic,  his  body  toughened,  his  heart 
light,  his  soul  dilated;  while  those  cramped  and 
distorted  members  in  the  calf  and  kid  are  the  unfor- 
tunate wretches  doomed  to  carriages  and  cushions. 

I  am  not  going  to  advocate  the  disuse  of  boots 
and  shoes,  or  the  abandoning  of  the  improved  modes 
of  travel ;  but  I  am  going  to  brag  as  lustily  as  I  can 
on  behalf  of  the  pedestrian,  and  show  how  all  the 
shining  angels  second  and  accompany  the  man  who 
goes  afoot,  while  all  the  dark  spirits  are  ever  look- 
ing out  for  a  chance  to  ride. 

When  I  see  the  discomforts  that  able-bodied 
American  men  will  put  up  with  rather  than  go  a 
mile  or  half  a  mile  on  foot,  the  abuses  they  will 
tolerate  and  encourage,  crowding  the  street  car  on 
a  little  fall  in  the  temperature  or  the  appearance  of 
an  inch  or  two  of  snow,  packing  up  to  overflowing, 
dangling  to  the  straps,  treading  on  each  other's 
toes,  breathing  each  other's  breaths,  crushing  the 
women  and  children,  hanging  by  tooth  and  nail  to 
a  square  inch  of  the  platform,  imperiling  their  limbs 
and  killing  the  horses,  —  I  think  the  commonest 
tramp  in  the  street  has  good  reason  to  felicitate 
himself  on  his  rare  privilege  of  going  afoot.  Indeed, 
a  race  that  neglects  or  despises  this  primitive  gift, 
that  fears  the  touch  of  the  soil,  that  has  no  foot- 
paths, no  community  of  ownership  in  the  land 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD      21 

which  they  imply,  that  warns  off  the  walker  as  a  tres- 
passer, that  knows  no  way  but  the  highway,  the 
carriage-way,  that  forgets  the  stile,  the  foot-bridge, 
that  even  ignores  the  rights  of  the  pedestrian  in  the 
public  road,  providing  no  escape  for  him  but  in  the 
ditch  or  up  the  bank,  is  in  a  fair  way  to  far  more 
serious  degeneracy. 

Shakespeare  makes  the  chief  qualification  of  the 
walker  a  merry  heart :  — 

"  Jog  on,  jog  on,  the  footpath  way, 

And  merrily  hent  the  stile-a; 

A  merry  heart  goes  all  the  day, 

Your  sad  tires  in  a  mile-a. ' ' 

The  human  body  is  a  steed  that  goes  freest  and 
longest  under  a  light  rider,  and  the  lightest  of  all 
riders  is  a  cheerful  heart.  Your  sad,  or  morose,  or 
embittered,  or  preoccupied  heart  settles  heavily  into 
the  saddle,  and  the  poor  beast,  the  body,  breaks 
down  the  first  mile.  Indeed,  the  heaviest  thing 
the  world  is  a  heavy  heart.  Next  to  that,  the  most 
burdensome  to  the  walker  is  a  heart  not  in  perfect 
sympathy  and  accord  with  the  body,  —  a  reluctant 
or  unwilling  heart.  The  horse  and  rider  must  not 
only  both  be  willing  to  go  the  same  way,  but  the 
rider  must  lead  the  way  and  infuse  his  own  light- 
ness and  eagerness  into  the  steed.  Herein  is  no 
doubt  our  trouble,  and  one  reason  of  the  decay  of 
the  noble  art  in  this  country.  We  are  unwilling 


22     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

walkers.  We  are  not  innocent  and  simple-hearted 
enough  to  enjoy  a  walk.  We  have  fallen  from  that 
state  of  grace  which  capacity  to  enjoy  a  walk  im- 
plies. It  cannot  be  said  that  as  a  people  we  are  so 
positively  sad,  or  morose,  or  melancholic,  as  that  we 
are  vacant  of  that  sportiveness  and  surplusage  of 
animal  spirits  that  characterized  our  ancestors,  and 
that  springs  from  full  and  harmonious  life,  —  a 
sound  heart  in  accord  with  a  sound  body.  A  man 
must  invest  himself  near  at  hand  and  in  common 
things,  and  be  content  with  a  steady  and  moderate 
return,  if  he  would  know  the  blessedness  of  a  cheer- 
ful heart  and  the  sweetness  of  a  walk  over  the  round 
earth.  This  is  a  lesson  the  American  has  yet  to 
learn,  —  capability  of  amusement  on  a  low  key.  He 
expects  rapid  and  extraordinary  returns.  He  would 
make  the  very  elemental  laws  pay  usury.  He  has 
nothing  to  invest  in  a  walk ;  it  is  too  slow,  too  cheap. 
We  crave  the  astonishing,  the  exciting,  the  far  away, 
and  do  not  know  the  highways  of  the  gods  when  we 
see  them,  —  always  a  sign  of  the  decay  of  the  faith 
and  simplicity  of  man. 

If  I  say  to  my  neighbor,  "  Come  with  me,  I  have 
great  wonders  to  show  you,"  he  pricks  up  his  ears 
and  comes  forthwith;  but  when  I  take  him  on  the 
hills  under  the  full  blaze  of  the  sun,  or  along  the 
country  road,  our  footsteps  lighted  by  the  moon  and 
stars,  and  say  to  him,  "  Behold,  these  are  the  won- 
ders, these  are  the  circuits  of  the  gods,  this  we  now 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD     23 

tread  is  a  morning  star,"  he  feels  defrauded,  and  as 
if  I  had  played  him  a  trick.  And  yet  nothing  less 
than  dilatation  and  enthusiasm  like  this  is  the  badge 
of  the  master  walker. 

If  we  are  not  sad,  we  are  careworn,  hurried,  dis- 
contented, mortgaging  the  present  for  the  promise 
of  the  future.  If  we  take  a  walk,  it  is  as  we  take  a 
prescription,  with  about  the  same  relish  and  with 
about  the  same  purpose;  and  the  more  the  fatigue, 
the  greater  our  faith  in  the  virtue  of  the  medicine. 

Of  those  gleesome  saunters  over  the  hills  in  spring, 
or  those  sallies  of  the  body  in  winter,  those  excur- 
sions into  space  when  the  foot  strikes  fire  at  every 
step,  when  the  air  tastes  like  a  new  and  finer  mix- 
ture, when  we  accumulate  force  and  gladness  as  we 
go  along,  when  the  sight  of  objects  by  the  roadside 
and  of  the  fields  and  woods  pleases  more  than  pic- 
tures or  than  all  the  art  in  the  world,  —  those  ten 
or  twelve  mile  dashes  that  are  but  the  wit  and  efflu- 
ence of  the  corporeal  powers,  —  of  such  diversion 
and  open  road  entertainment,  I  say,  most  of  us 
know  very  little. 

I  notice  with  astonishment  that  at  our  fashionable 
watering-places  nobody  walks;  that,  of  all  those  vast 
crowds  of  health-seekers  and  lovers  of  country  air, 
you  can  never  catch  one  in  the  fields  or  woods,  or 
guilty  of  trudging  along  the  country  road  with  dust 
on  his  shoes  and  sun-tan  on  his  hands  and  face. 
The  sole  amusement  seems  to  be  to  eat  and  dress 


24     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

and  sit  about  the  hotels  and  glare  at  each  other. 
The  men  look  bored,  the  women  look  tired,  and  all 
seem  to  sigh,  "O  Lord!  what  shall  we  do  to  be 
happy  and  not  be  vulgar?"  Quite  different  from 
our  British  cousins  across  the  water,  who  have 
plenty  of  amusement  and  hilarity,  spending  most 
of  the  time  at  their  watering-places  in  the  open  air, 
strolling,  picnicking,  boating,  climbing,  briskly 
walking,  apparently  with  little  fear  of  sun-tan  or  of 
compromising  their  "gentility." 

It  is  indeed  astonishing  with  what  ease  and  hilar- 
ity the  English  walk.  To  an  American  it  seems  a 
kind  of  infatuation.  When  Dickens  was  in  this 
country,  I  imagine  the  aspirants  to  the  honor  of  a 
walk  with  him  were  not  numerous.  In  a  pedestrian 
tour  of  England  by  an  American,  I  read  that,  "  after 
breakfast  with  the  Independent  minister,  he  walked 
with  us  for  six  miles  out  of  town  upon  our  road. 
Three  little  boys  and  girls,  the  youngest  six  years 
old,  also  accompanied  us.  They  were  romping  and 
rambling  about  all  the  while,  and  their  morning 
walk  must  have  been  as  much  as  fifteen  miles;  but 
they  thought  nothing  of  it,  and  when  we  parted 
were  apparently  as  fresh  as  when  they  started,  and 
very  loath  to  return." 

I  fear,  also,  the  American  is  becoming  disquali- 
fied for  the  manly  art  of  walking  by  a  falling  off  in 
the  size  of  his  foot.  He  cherishes  and  cultivates 
this  part  of  his  anatomy,  and  apparently  thinks  his 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD     25 

taste  and  good  breeding  are  to  be  inferred  from  its 
diminutive  size.  A  small,  trim  foot,  well  booted 
or  gaitered,  is  the  national  vanity.  How  we  stare 
at  the  big  feet  of  foreigners,  and  wonder  what  may 
be  the  price  of  leather  in  those  countries,  and  where 
all  the  aristocratic  blood  is,  that  these  plebeian  ex- 
tremities so  predominate !  If  we  were  admitted  to 
the  confidences  of  the  shoemaker  to  Her  Majesty  or 
to  His  Royal  Highness,  no  doubt  we  should  modify 
our  views  upon  this  latter  point,  for  a  truly  large 
and  royal  nature  is  never  stunted  in  the  extremi- 
ties ;  a  little  foot  never  yet  supported  a  great  char- 
acter. 

It  is  said  that  Englishmen,  when  they  first  come 
to  this  country,  are  for  some  time  under  the  impres- 
sion that  American  women  all  have  deformed  feet, 
they  are  so  coy  of  them  and  so  studiously  careful 
to  keep  them  hid.  That  there  is  an  astonishing  dif- 
ference between  the  women  of  the  two  countries 
in  this  respect,  every  traveler  can  testify;  and  that 
there  is  a  difference  equally  astonishing  between 
the  pedestrian  habits  and  capabilities  of  the  rival 
sisters,  is  also  certain. 

The  English  pedestrian,  no  doubt,  has  the  advan- 
tage of  us  in  the  matter  of  climate ;  for,  notwith- 
standing the  traditional  gloom  and  moroseness  of 
English  skies,  they  have  in  that  country  none  of 
those  relaxing,  sinking,  enervating  days,  of  which 
we  have  so  many  here,  and  which  seem  especially 


26     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

trying  to  the  female  constitution,  —  days  which 
withdraw  all  support  from  the  back  and  loins,  and 
render  walking  of  all  things  burdensome.  Theirs  is 
a  climate  of  which  it  has  been  said  that  "  it  invites 
men  abroad  more  days  in  the  year  and  more  hours 
in  the  day  than  that  of  any  other  country." 

Then  their  land  is  threaded  with  paths  which 
invite  the  walker,  and  which  are  scarcely  less  im- 
portant than  the  highways.  I  heard  of  a  surly 
nobleman  near  London  who  took  it  into  his  head 
to  close  a  footpath  that  passed  through  his  estate 
near  his  house,  and  open  another  a  little  farther 
off.  The  pedestrians  objected;  the  matter  got  into 
the  courts,  and  after  protracted  litigation  the  aris- 
tocrat was  beaten.  The  path  could  not  be  closed  or 
moved.  The  memory  of  man  ran  not  to  the  time 
when  there  was  not  a  footpath  there,  and  every 
pedestrian  should  have  the  right  of  way  there  still. 

I  remember  the  pleasure  I  had  in  the  path 
connects  Stratford-on-Avon  with  Shottery,  Shake- 
speare's path  when  he  went  courting  Anne  Hatha- 
way. By  the  king's  highway  the  distance  is  some 
farther,  so  there  is  a  well-worn  path  along  the  hedge- 
rows and  through  the  meadows  and  turnip  patches. 
The  traveler  in  it  has  the  privilege  of  crossing  the 
railroad  track,  an  unusual  privilege  in  England,  and 
one  denied  to  the  lord  in  his  carriage,  who  must 
either  go  over  or  under  it.  (It  is  a  privilege,  is  it 
not,  to  be  allowed  the  forbidden,  even  if  it  be  the 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD     27 

privilege  of  being  run  over  by  the  engine?)  In 
strolling  over  the  South  Downs,  too,  I  was  delighted 
to  find  that  where  the  hill  was  steepest  some  bene- 
factor of  the  order  of  walkers  had  made  notches  in 
the  sward,  so  that  the  foot  could  bite  the  better  and 
firmer;  the  path  became  a  kind  of  stairway,  which 
I  have  no  doubt  the  plowman  respected. 

When  you  see  an  English  country  church  with- 
drawn, secluded,  out  of  the  reach  of  wheels,  stand- 
ing amid  grassy  graves  and  surrounded  by  noble 
trees,  approached  by  paths  and  shaded  lanes,  you 
appreciate  more  than  ever  this  beautiful  habit  of 
the  people.  Only  a  race  that  knows  how  to  use  its 
feet,  and  holds  footpaths  sacred,  could  put  such  a  L^- 
charm  of  privacy  and  humility  into  such  a  structure. 
I  think  I  should  be  tempted  to  go  to  church  myself 
if  I  saw  all  my  neighbors  starting  off  across  the 
fields  or  along  paths  that  led  to  such  charmed  spots, 
and  were  sure  I  should  not  be  jostled  or  run  over  by 
the  rival  chariots  of  the  worshipers  at  the  temple 
doors.  I  think  that  is  what  ails  our  religion ;  humil- 
ity and  devoutness  of  heart  leave  one  when  he  lays 
by  his  walking  shoes  and  walking  clothes,  and  sets 
out  for  church  drawn  by  something. 

Indeed,  I  think  it  would  be  tantamount  to  an 
astonishing  revival  of  religion  if  the  people  would 
all  walk  to  church  on  Sunday  and  walk  home  again. 
Think  how  the  stones  would  preach  to  them  by  the  is 
wayside ;  how  their  benumbed  minds  would  warm 


28     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

up  beneath  the  friction  of  the  gravel ;  how  their 
vain  and  foolish  thoughts,  their  desponding  thoughts, 
their  besetting  demons  of  one  kind  and  another, 
would  drop  behind  them,  unable  to  keep  up  or  to 
endure  the  fresh  air!  They  would  walk  away  from 
their  ennui,  their  worldly  cares,  their  uncharitable- 
ness,  their  pride  of  dress  ;  for  these  devils  always 
want  to  ride,  while  the  simple  virtues  are  never  so 
happy  as  when  on  foot.  Let  us  walk  by  all  means; 
but  if  we  will  ride,  get  an  ass. 

Then  the  English  claim  that  they  are  a  more 
hearty  and  robust  people  than  we  are.  It  is  certain 
they  are  a  plainer  people,  have  plainer  tastes,  dress 
plainer,  build  plainer,  speak  plainer,  keep  closer  to 
facts,  wear  broader  shoes  and  coarser  clothes,  and 
place  a  lower  estimate  on  themselves,  —  all  of  which 
traits  favor  pedestrian  habits.  The  English  grandee 
is  not  confined  to  his  carriage;  but  if  the  American 
aristocrat  leaves  his,  he  is  ruined.  Oh  the  weari- 
ness, the  emptiness,  the  plotting,  the  seeking  rest 
and  finding  none,  that  go  by  in  the  carriages !  while 
your  pedestrian  is  always  cheerful,  alert,  refreshed, 
with  his  heart  in  his  hand  and  his  hand  free  to  all. 
He  looks  down  upon  nobody;  he  is  on  the  common 
level.  His  pores  are  all  open,  his  circulation  is  ac- 
tive, his  digestion  good.  His  heart  is  not  cold,  nor 
are  his  faculties  asleep.  He  is  the  only  real  traveler1, 
he  alone  tastes  the  "gay,  fresh  sentiment  of  the 
road."  He  is  not  isolated,  but  is  at  one  with  things, 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD      29 

with  the  farms  and  the  industries  on  either  hand. 
The  vital,  universal  currents  play  through  him. 
He  knows  the  ground  is  alive;  he  feels  the  pulses j^- 
of  the  wind,  and  reads  the  mute  language  of  things. 
His  sympathies  are  all  aroused;  his  senses  are  con- 
tinually reporting  messages  to  his  mind.  Wind, 
frost,  rain,  heat,  cold,  are  something  to  him.  He  is 
not  merely  a  spectator  of  the  panorama  of  nature, 
but  a  participator  in  it.  He  experiences  the  country 
he  passes  through, — tastes  it,  feels  it,  absorbs  it; 
the  traveler  in  his  fine  carriage  sees  it  merely.  This 
gives  the  fresh  charm  to  that  class  of  books  that 
may  be  called  "  Views  Afoot,"  and  to  the  narratives 
of  hunters,  naturalists,  exploring  parties,  etc.  The 
walker  does  not  need  a  large  territory.  When  you 
get  into  a  railway  car  you  want  a  continent,  the 
man  in  his  carriage  requires  a  township  ;  but  a 
walker  like  Thoreau  finds  as  much  and  more  along 
the  shores  of  Walden  Pond.  The  former,  as  it  were, 
has  merely  time  to  glance  at  the  headings  of  the 
chapters,  while  the  latter  need  not  miss  a  line,  and 
Thoreau  reads  between  the  lines.  Then  the  walker 
has  the  privilege  of  the  fields,  the  woods,  the  hills, 
the  byways.  The  apples  by  the  roadside  are  for  him, 
and  the  berries,  and  the  spring  of  water,  and  the 
friendly  shelter;  and  if  the  weather  is  cold,  he  eats 
the  frost  grapes  and  the  persimmons,  or  even  the 
white-meated  turnip,  snatched  from  the  field  he 
passed  through,  with  incredible  relish. 


30     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

Afoot  and  in  the  open  road,  one  has  a  fair  start 
in  life  at  last.  There  is  no  hindrance  now.  Let  him 
put  his  best  foot  forward.  He  is  on  the  broadest 
human  plare.  This  is  on  the  level  of  all  the  great 
laws  and  heroic  deeds.  From  this  platform  he  is 
eligible  to  any  good  fortune.  He  was  sighing  for 
the  golden  age ;  let  him  walk  to  it.  Every  step 
brings  him  nearer.  The  youth  of  the  world  is  but 
a  few  days'  journey  distant.  Indeed,  I  know  per- 
sons who  think  they  have  walked  back  to  that  fresh 
aforetime  of  a  single  bright  Sunday  in  autumn  or 
early  spring.  Before  noon  they  felt  its  airs  upon 
their  cheeks,  and  by  nightfall,  on  the  banks  of  some 
quiet  stream,  or  along  some  path  in  the  wood,  or  on 
some  hilltop,  aver  they  have  heard  the  voices  and 
felt  the  wonder  and  the  mystery  that  so  enchanted 
the  early  races  of  men. 

I  think  if  I  could  walk  through  a  country,  I 
should  not  only  see  many  things  and  have  adven- 
tures that  I  should  otherwise  miss,  but  that  I  should 
come  into  relations  with  that  country  at  first  hand, 
and  with  the  men  and  women  in  it,  in  a  way  that 
would  afford  the  deepest  satisfaction.  Hence  I  envy 
the  good  fortune  of  all  walkers,  and  feel  like  join- 
ing myself  to  every  tramp  that  comes  along.  I  am 
jealous  of  the  clergyman  I  read  about  the  other 
day,  who  footed  it  from  Edinburgh  to  London,  as 
poor  Effie  Deans  did,  carrying  her  shoes  in  her  hand 
most  of  the  way,  and  over  the  ground  that  rugged 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD      31 

Ben  Jonson  strode,  larking  it  to  Scotland,  so  long 
ago.  I  read  with  longing  of  the  pedestrian  feats  of 
college  youths,  so  gay  and  light-hearted,  with  their 
coarse  shoes  on  their  feet  and  their  knapsacks  on 
their  backs.  It  would  have  been  a  good  draught  of 
the  rugged  cup  to  have  walked  with  Wilson  the  orni- 
thologist, deserted  by  his  companions,  from  Niagara 
to  Philadelphia  through  the  snows  of  winter.  I 
almost  wish  that  I  had  been  born  to  the  career  of  a 
German  mechanic,  that  I  might  have  had  that  de- 
licious adventurous  year  of  wandering  over  my  coun- 
try before  I  settled  down  to  work.  I  think  how 
much  richer  and  firmer-grained  life  would  be  to  me 
if  I  could  journey  afoot  through  Florida  and  Texas, 
or  follow  the  windings  of  the  Platte  or  the  Yellow- 
stone, or  stroll  through  Oregon,  or  browse  for  a  sea- 
son about  Canada.  In  the  bright,  inspiring  days  of 
autumn  I  only  want  the  time  and  the  companion  to 
walk  back  to  the  natal  spot,  the  family  nest,  across 
two  States  and  into  the  mountains  of  a  third.  What 
adventures  we  would  have  by  the  way,  what  hard 
pulls,  what  prospects  from  hills,  what  spectacles 
we  would  behold  of  night  and  day,  what  passages 
with  dogs,  what  glances,  what  peeps  into  windows, 
what  characters  we  should  fall  in  with,  and  how 
seasoned  and  hardy  we  should  arrive  at  our  desti- 
nation ! 

For  companion  I  should  want  a  veteran  of  the  i/' 
war!     Those  marches  put  something  into  him  I 


32     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

like.  Even  at  this  distance  his  mettle  is  but  little 
softened.  As  soon  as  he  gets  warmed  up,  it  all 
comes  back  to  him.  He  catches  your  step  and  away 
you  go,  a  gay,  adventurous,  haif-predatory  couple. 
How  quickly  he  falls  into  the  old  ways  of  jest  and 
anecdote  and  song!  You  may  have  known  him  for 
years  without  having  heard  him  hum  an  air,  or  more 
than  casually  revert  to  the  subject  of  his  experience 
during  the  war.  You  have  even  questioned  and 
cross-questioned  him  without  firing  the  train  you 
wished.  But  get  him  out  on  a  vacation  tramp,  and 
you  can  walk  it  all  out  of  him.  By  the  camp-fire  at 
night,  or  swinging  along  the  streams  by  day,  song, 
anecdote,  adventure,  come  to  the  surface,  and  you 
wonder  how  your  companion  has  kept  silent  so 
long. 

It  is  another  proof  of  how  walking  brings  out  the 
true  character  of  a  man.  The  devil  never  yet  asked 
his  victims  to  take  a  walk  with  him.  You  will  not 
be  long  in  finding  your  companion  out.  All  dis- 
guises will  fall  away  from  him.  As  his  pores  open 
his  character  is  laid  bare.  His  deepest  and  most 
private  self  will  come  to  the  top.  It  matters  little 
with  whom  you  ride,  so  he  be  not  a  pickpocket ;  for 
both  of  you  will,  very  likely,  settle  down  closer  and 
firmer  in  your  reserve,  shaken  down  like  a  measure 
of  corn  by  the  jolting  as  the  journey  proceeds.  But 
walking  is  a  more  vital  copartnership;  the  relation 
is  a  closer  and  more  sympathetic  one,  and  you  do 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD      33 

not  feel  like  walking  ten  paces  with  a  stranger  with- 
out speaking  to  him. 

Hence  the  fastidiousness  of  the  professional  walker 
in  choosing  or  admitting  a  companion,  and  hence 
the  truth  of  a  remark  of  Emerson,  that  you  will 
generally  fare  better  to  take  your  dog  than  to  invite 
your  neighbor.  Your  cur-dog  is  a  true  pedestrian, 
and  your  neighbor  is  very  likely  a  small  politician. 
The  dog  enters  thoroughly  into  the  spirit  of  the 
enterprise ;  he  is  not  indifferent  or  preoccupied ;  he 
is  constantly  sniffing  adventure,  laps  at  every  spring, 
looks  upon  every  field  and  wood  as  a  new  world  to 
be  explored,  is  ever  on  some  fresh  trail,  knows  some- 
thing important  will  happen  a  little  farther  on,  gazes 
with  the  true  wonder-seeing  eyes,  whatever  the  spot 
or  whatever  the  road  finds  it  good  to  be  there,  —  in 
short,  is  just  that  happy,  delicious,  excursive  vaga- 
bond that  touches  one  at  so  many  points,  and  whose 
human  prototype  in  a  companion  robs  miles  and 
leagues  of  half  their  power  to  fatigue. 

Persons  who  find  themselves  spent  in  a  short 
walk  to  the  market  or  the  post-office,  or  to  do  a 
little  shopping,  wonder  how  it  is  that  their  pedes- 
trian friends  can  compass  so  many  weary  miles  and 
not  fall  down  from  sheer  exhaustion;  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  the  walker  is  a  kind  of  projectile  that 
drops  far  or  near  according  to  the  expansive  force 
of  the  motive  that  set  it  in  motion,  and  that  it  is  easy 
enough  to  regulate  the  charge  according  to  the  dis- 


34     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

tance  to  be  traversed.  If  I  am  loaded  to  carry  only 
one  mile  and  am  compelled  to  walk  three,  I  gen- 
erally feel  more  fatigue  than  if  I  had  walked  six 
under  the  proper  impetus  of  preadjusted  resolution. 
In  other  words,  the  will  or  corporeal  mainspring. 
whatever  it  be,  is  capable  of  being  wound  up  tc 
different  degrees  of  tension,  so  that  one  may  walk 
all  day  nearly  as  easy  as  half  that  time,  if  he  is  pre- 
pared beforehand.  He  knows  his  task,  and  he 
measures  and  distributes  his  powers  accordingly.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  an  unknown  road  is  always  a 
long  road.  We  cannot  cast  the  mental  eye  along  it 
and  see  the  end  from  the  beginning.  "We  are  fight- 
ing in  the  dark,  and  cannot  take  the  measure  of  our 
foe.  Every  step  must  be  preordained  and  provided 
for  in  the  mind.  Hence  also  the  fact  that  to  van- . 
quish  one  mile  in  the  woods  seems  equal  to  com- 
passing three  in  the  open  country.  The  furlongs 
are  ambushed,  and  we  magnify  them. 

Then,  again,  how  annoying  to  be  told  it  is  only 
five  miles  to  the  next  place  when  it  is  really  eight 
or  ten!  We  fall  short  nearly  half  the  distance,  and 
are  compelled  to  urge  and  roll  the  spent  ball  the 
rest  of  the  way.  In  such  a  case  walking  degener- 
ates from  a  fine  art  to  a  mechanic  art ;  we  walk 
merely ;  to  get  over  the  ground  becomes  the  one 
serious  and  engrossing  thought ;  whereas  success  in 
walking  is  not  to  let  your  right  foot  know  what 
your  left  foot  doeth.  Your  heart  must  furnish  such 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD      35 

music  that  in  keeping  time  to  it  your  feet  will  cany 
you  around  the  globe  without  knowing  it.  The 
walker  I  would  describe  takes  no  note  of  distance; 
his  walk  is  a  sally,  a  bonmot,  an  unspoken  jeu 
d1  esprit ;  the  ground  is  his  butt,  his  provocation; 
it  furnishes  him  the  resistance  his  body  craves ;  he 
rebounds  upon  it,  he  glances  off  and  returns  again, 
and  uses  it  gayly  as  his  tool. 

I  do  not  think  I  exaggerate  the  importance  or 
the  charms  of  pedestrianism,  or  our  need  as  a  people 
to  cultivate  the  art.  I  think  it  would  tend  to  soften 
the  national  manners,  to  teach  us  the  meaning  of 
leisure,  to  acquaint  us  with  the  charms  of  the  open 
air,  to  strengthen  and  foster  the  tie  between  the 
race  and  the  land.  No  one  else  looks  out  upon  the 
world  so  kindly  and  charitably  as  the  pedestrian; 
no  one  else  gives  and  takes  so  much  from  the  coun- 
try he  passes  through.  Next  to  the  laborer  in  the 
fields,  the  walker  holds  the  closest  relation  to  the 
soil;  and  he  holds  a  closer  and  more  vital  relation 
to  nature  because  he  is  freer  and  his  mind  more  at 
leisure. 

Man  takes  root  at  his  feet,  and  at  best  he  is  no 
more  than  a  potted  plant  in  his  house  or  carriage 
till  he  has  established  communication  with  the  soil 
by  the  loving  and  magnetic  touch  of  his  soles  to  it. 
Then  the  tie  of  association  is  born;  then  spring 
those  invisible  fibres  and  rootlets  through  wrhich 
character  comes  to  smack  of  the  soil,  and  which 


36     THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD 

make  a  man  kindred  to  the  spot  of  earth  he  in- 
habits. 

The  roads  and  paths  you  have  walked  along  in 
summer  and  winter  weather,  the  fields  and  hills 
which  you  have  looked  upon  in  lightness  and  glad- 
ness of  heart,  where  fresh  thoughts  have  come  into 
your  mind,  or  some  noble  prospect  has  opened  be- 
fore you,  and  especially  the  quiet  ways  where  you 
have  walked  in  sweet  converse  with  your  friend, 
pausing  under  the  trees,  drinking  at  the  spring,  — 
henceforth  they  are  not  the  same;  a  new  charm  is 
added;  those  thoughts  spring  there  perennial,  your 
friend  walks  there  forever. 

We  have  produced  some  good  walkers  and  saua- 
terers,  and  some  noted  climbers;  but  as  a  staple 
recreation,  as  a  daily  practice,  the  mass  of  the  peo- 
ple dislike  and  despise  walking.  Thoreau  said  he 
was  a  good  horse,  but  a  poor  roadster.  I  chant  the 
virtues  of  the  roadster  as  well.  I  sing  of  the  sweet- 
ness of  gravel,  good  sharp  quartz-grit.  It  is  the 
proper  condiment  for  the  sterner  seasons,  and  many 
a  human  gizzard  would  be  cured  of  half  its  ills  by 
a  suitable  daily  allowance  of  it.  I  think  Thoreau 
himself  would  have  profited  immensely  by  it.  His 
diet  was  too  exclusively  vegetable.  A  man  cannot 
live  on  grass  alone.  If  one  has  been  a  lotus-eater 
all  summer,  he  must  turn  gravel-eater  in  the  fall 
and  winter.  Those  who  have  tried  it  know  that 
gravel  possesses  an  equal  though  an  opposite  charm. 


THE  EXHILARATIONS  OF  THE  ROAD     37 

spurs  to  action.  The  foot  tastes  it  and  hence- 
forth rests  not.  The  joy  of  moving  and  surmount- 
ing, of  attrition  and  progression,  the  thirst  for  space, 
for  miles  and  leagues  of  distance,  for  sights  and 
prospects,  to  cross  mountains  and  thread  rivers, 
and  defy  frost,  heat,  snow,  danger,  difficulties,  seizes 
it;  and  from  that  day  forth  its  possessor  is  enrolled 
in  the  noble  army  of  walkers. 


BIRD   LIFE   IN   AN   OLD   APPLE-TREE1 

NEAR  my  study  there  used  to  stand  several  old 
apple-trees  that  bore  fair  crops  of  apples,  but 
x  better  crops  of  birds.  Every  year  these  old  trees 
were  the  scenes  of  bird  incidents  and  bird  histories 
that  were  a  source  of  much  interest  and  amusement. 
Young  trees  may  be  the  best  for  apples,  but  old 
trees  are  sure  to  bear  the  most  birds.  If  they  are 
very  decrepit,  and  full  of  dead  and  hollow  branches, 
they  will  bear  birds  in  winter  as  well  as  summer. 
The  downy  woodpecker  wants  no  better  place  than 
the  brittle,  dozy  trunk  of  an  apple-tree  in  which 
to  excavate  his  winter  home.  My  old  apple-trees 
are  all  down  but  one,  and  this  one  is  probably  an 
octogenarian,  and  I  am  afraid  cannot  stand  another 
winter.  Its  body  is  a  mere  shell  not  much  over  one 
inch  thick,  the  heart  and  main  interior  structure 
having  turned  to  black  mould  long  ago.  An  old 
tree,  unlike  an  old  person,  as  long  as  it  lives  at  all, 
always  has  a  young  streak,  or  rather  ring,  in  it.  It 
wears  a  girdle  of  perpetual  youth. 

My  old  tree  has  never  yet  failed  to  yield  me  a 
bushel  or  more  of  gillyflowers,  and  it  has  turned  out 

1  From  Riverby. 


BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE     39 

at  least  a  dozen  broods  of  the  great  crested  flycatcher, 
and  robins  and  bluebirds  in  proportion.  It  carries 
up  one  large  decayed  trunk,  which  some  one  sawed 
off  at  the  top  before  my  time,  and  in  this  a  downy 
woodpecker  is  now,  January  12,  making  a  home. 
Several  years  ago,  a  downy  woodpecker  excavated  a 
retreat  in  this  branch,  which  the  following  season 
was  appropriated  by  the  bluebirds,  and  has  been 
occupied  by  them  nearly  every  season  since.  When 
the  bluebirds  first  examined  the  cavity  in  the 
spring,  I  suppose  they  did  not  find  the  woodpecker 
at  home,  as  he  is  a  pretty  early  riser. 

I  happened  to  be  passing  near  the  tree  when,  on 
again  surveying  the  premises  one  afternoon,  they 
found  him  in.  The  male  bluebird  was  very  angry, 
and  I  suppose  looked  upon  the  innocent  downy 
as  an  intruder.  He  seized  on  him,  and  the  two  fell 
to  the  ground,  the  speckled  woodpecker  quite  cov- 
ered by  the  blue  coat  of  his  antagonist.  Downy 
screamed  vigorously,  and  got  away  as  soon  as  he 
could,  but  not  till  the  bluebird  had  tweaked  out  a 
feather  or  two.  He  is  evidently  no  fighter,  though 
one  would  think  that  a  bird  that  had  an  instrument 
with  which  it  could  drill  a  hole  into  a  tree  could 
defend  itself  against  the  soft-billed  bluebird. 

Two  seasons  the  English  sparrows  ejected  the 
bluebirds  and  established  themselves  in  it,  but 
were  in  turn  ejected  by  me,  their  furniture  of  hens' 
feathers  and  straws  pitched  out,  and  the  bluebirds 


40    BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE 

invited  to  return,  which  later  in  the  season  they 
did. 

The  new  cavity  which  downy  is  now  drilling  is 
just  above  the  old  one  and  near  the  top  of  the  stub. 
Its  wells  are  usually  sunk  to  a  depth  of  six  or  eight 
inches,  but  in  the  present  case  it  cannot  be  sunk 
more  than  four  inches  without  breaking  through 
into  the  old  cavity.  Downy  seems  to  have  considered 
the  situation,  and  is  proceeding  cautiously.  As  she 
passed  last  night  in  her  new  quarters,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  it  is  about  finished,  and  there  must  be  at 
least  one  inch  of  wood  beneath  her.  She  worked 
vigorously  the  greater  part  of  the  day,  her  yellow 
chips  strewing  the  snow  beneath.  I  paused  several 
times  to  observe  her  proceedings.  After  her  chips 
accumulate,  she  stops  her  drilling  and  throws  them 
out.  This  she  does  with  her  beak,  shaking  them 
out  very  rapidly  with  a  flirt  of  her  head.  She  did 
not  disappear  from  sight  each  time  to  load  her  beak, 
but  withdrew  her  head,  and  appeared  to  seize  the 
fragments  as  if  from  her  feet.  If  she  had  had  a  com- 
panion, I  should  have  thought  he  was  handing  them 
up  to  her  from  the  bottom  of  the  cavity.  Maybe 
she  had  them  piled  up  near  the  doorway. 

The  woodpeckers,  both  the  hairy  and  the  downy, 
usually  excavate  these  winter  retreats  in  the  fall. 
They  pass  the  nights  and  the  stormy  days  in  them. 
So  far  as  I  have  observed,  they  do  not  use  them 
as  nesting-places  the  following  season.  Last  night 


BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE    41 

when  I  rapped  on  the  trunk  of  the  old  apple-tree 
near  sundown,  downy  put  out  her  head  with  a  sur- 
prised and  inquiring  look,  and  then  withdrew  it 
again  as  I  passed  on. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  broods  of  the  great  crested 
flycatchers  that  have  been  reared  in  the  old  apple- 
tree.  This  is  by  no  means  a  common  bird,  and  as 
it  destroys  many  noxious  insects,  I  look  upon  it  with 
a  friendly  eye,  though  it  is  the  most  uncouth  and 
unmusical  of  the  flycatchers.  Indeed,  among  the 
other  birds  of  the  garden  and  orchard  it  seems  quite 
like  a  barbarian.  It  has  a  harsh,  froglike  scream, 
form  and  manners  to  suit,  and  is  clad  in  a  suit  of 
butternut  brown.  It  seeks  a  cast-off  snakeskin  to 
weave  into  its  nest,  and  not  finding  one,  will  take 
an  onion  skin,  a  piece  of  oiled  paper,  or  large  fish 
scales.  It  builds  in  a  cavity  in  a  tree,  rears  one 
brood,  and  is  off  early  in  the  season.  I  never  see  or 
hear  it  after  August  1. 

A  pair  have  built  in  a  large,  hollow  limb  in  my 
old  apple-tree  for  many  years.  Whether  it  is  the 
same  pair  or  not,  I  do  not  know.  Probably  it  is,  or 
else  some  of  their  descendants.  I  looked  into  the 
cavity  one  day  while  the  mother  bird  was  upon  the 
nest,  but  before  she  had  laid  any  eggs.  A  sudden 
explosive  sound  came  up  out  of  the  dark  depths  of 
the  limb,  much  like  that  made  by  an  alarmed  cat. 
It  made  me  jerk  my  head  back,  when  out  came  the 
bird  and  hurried  off.  For  several  days  I  saw  no 


42    BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE 

more  of  the  pair,  and  feared  they  had  deserted  the 
spot.  But  they  had  not;  they  were  only  more  sly 
than  usual.  I  soon  discovered  an  egg  in  the  nest, 
and  then  another  and  another. 

One  day,  as  I  stood  near  by,  a  male  bluebird  came 
along  with  his  mate,  prospecting  for  a  spot  for  a 
second  nest.  He  alighted  at  the  entrance  of  this 
hole  and  peeped  in.  Instantly  the  flycatcher  was 
upon  him.  The  blue  was  enveloped  by  the  butter- 
nut brown.  The  two  fell  to  the  ground,  where  the 
bluebird  got  away,  and  in  a  moment  more  came 
back  and  looked  in  the  hole  again,  as  much  as 
to  say,  "  I  will  look  into  that  hole  now  at  all  haz- 
ards." The  barbarian  made  a  dash  for  him  again, 
but  he  was  now  on  his  guard  and  avoided  her. 

Not  long  after,  the  bluebirds  decided  to  occupy 
the  old  cavity  of  the  downy  woodpecker  from  which 
I  had  earlier  in  the  season  expelled  the  English 
sparrows.  After  they  had  established  themselves 
here,  a  kind  of  border  war  broke  out  between  the 
male  bluebird  and  the  flycatchers,  and  was  kept  up 
for  weeks.  The  bluebird  is  very  jealous  and  very 
bold.  He  will  not  even  tolerate  a  house  wren  in 
the  vicinity  of  his  nest.  Every  bird  that  builds  in 
a  cavity  he  looks  upon  as  his  natural  rival  and  en- 
emy. The  flycatchers  did  not  seek  any  quarrel  with 
him  as  long  as  he  kept  to  his  own  domicile,  but  he 
could  not  tolerate  them  in  the  same  tree.  It  was  a 
pretty  sight  to  see  this  little  blue-coat  charging  the 


BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE    43 

butternut  through  the  trees.  The  beak  of  the  latter 
would  click  like  a  gunlock,  and  its  harsh,  savage 
voice  was  full  of  anger,  but  the  bluebird  never 
flinched,  and  was  always  ready  to  renew  the  fight. 

The  English  sparrow  will  sometimes  worst  the 
bluebird  by  getting  possession  of  the  box  or  cavity 
ahead  of  him.  Once  inside,  the  sparrow  can  hold 
the  fort,  and  the  bluebird  will  soon  give  up  the 
siege;  but  in  a  fair  field  and  no  favor,  the  native 
bird  will  quickly  rout  the  foreigner. 

Speaking  of  birds  that  build  in  cavities  reminds 
me  of  a  curious  trait  the  high-hole  has  developed  in 
my  vicinity,  one  which  I  have  never  noticed  or  heard 
of  elsewhere.  It  drills  into  buildings  and  steeples 
and  telegraph  poles,  and  in  some  instances  makes 
itself  a  serious  nuisance.  One  season  the  large  imi- 
tation Greek  columns  of  an  unoccupied  old-fash- 
ioned summer  residence  near  me  were  badly  marred 
by  them.  The  bird  bored  into  one  column,  and  find- 
ing the  cavity  —  a  foot  or  more  across  —  not  just 
what  it  was  looking  for,  cut  into  another  one,  and 
into  still  another.  Then  he  bored  into  the  ice-house 
on  the  premises,  and  in  the  sawdust  filling  between 
the  outer  and  inner  sheathing  found  a  place  to  his 
liking.  One  bird  seemed  like  a  monomaniac,  and 
drilled  holes  up  and  down  and  right  and  left,  as  if 
possessed  of  an  evil  spirit.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
if  a  high-hole  or  other  woodpecker  should  go  crazy, 
it  would  take  to  just  this  sort  of  thing,  drilling  into 


44    BIRD  LIFE  IN  AN  OLD  APPLE-TREE 

seasoned  timber  till  it  used  its  strength  up.  The 
one  I  refer  to  would  cut  through  a  dry  hemlock 
board  in  a  very  short  time,  making  the  slivers  fly. 
The  sound  was  like  that  of  a  carpenter's  hammer. 
It  may  have  been  that  he  was  an  unmated  bird,  a 
bachelor,  whose  suit  had  not  prospered  that  season, 
and  who  was  giving  vent  to  his  outraged  instincts  in 
drilling  these  mock  nesting-places. 


BIRD   COURTSHIP  i 

(r  1 1HERE  is  something  about  the  matchmaking  of 
[  JL  birds  that  is  not  easily  penetrated.  The  jeal- 
ousies and  rivalries  of  the  males  and  of  the  females 
are  easily  understood,  —  they  are  quite  human;  but 
those  sudden  rushes  of  several  males,  some  of  them 
already  mated,  after  one  female,  with  squeals  and 
screams  and  a  great  clatter  of  wings,  —  what  does  it 
mean  ?  There  is  nothing  human  about  that,  unless  it 
be  illustrative  of  a  trait  that  has  at  times  cropped  out 
in  the  earlier  races,  and  which  is  still  seen  among 
the  Eskimos,  where  the  male  carries  off  the  female 
by  force.  But  in  these  sudden  sallies  among  the 
birds,  the  female,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  is  never 
carried  off.  One  may  see  half  a  dozen  English  spar- 
rows engaged  in  what  at  first  glance  appears  to  be  a 
general  melee  in  the  gutter  or  on  the  sidewalk;  but 
if  you  look  more  closely,  you  will  see  a  single  female 
in  the  midst  of  the  mass,  beating  off  the  males,  who, 
with  plumage  puffed  out  and  screaming  and  chatter- 
ing, are  all  making  a  set  at  her.  She  strikes  right 
and  left,  and  seems  to  be  equally  displeased  with 
them  all.  But  her  anger  may  be  all  put  on,  and  she 
may  be  giving  the  wink  all  the  time  to  her  favorite. 

1  From  Riverby. 


46'  BIRD  COURTSHIP 

The  Eskimo  maiden  is  said  by  Doctor  Nansen  to 
resist  stoutly  being  carried  off  even  by  the  man  she 
is  desperately  in  love  with. 

In  the  latter  half  of  April,  we  pass  through  what 
I  call  the  "robin  racket,"  —  trains  of  three  or  four 
birds  rushing  pell-mell  over  the  lawn  and  fetch- 
ing up  in  a  tree  or  bush,  or  occasionally  upon  the 
ground,  all  piping  and  screaming  at  the  top  of  their 
voices,  but  whether  in  mirth  or  anger  it  is  hard  to 
tell.  The  nucleus  of  the  train  is  a  female.  One  can- 
not see  that  the  males  in  pursuit  of  her  are  rivals; 
it  seems  rather  as  if  they  had  united  to  hustle  her 
out  of  the  place.  But  somehow  the  matches  are  no 
doubt  made  and  sealed  during  these  mad  rushes. 
Maybe  the  female  shouts  out  to  her  suitors,  "  Who 
touches  me  first  wins,"  and  away  she  scurries  like 
an  arrow.  The  males  shout  out,  "Agreed!"  and 
away  they  go  in  pursuit,  each  trying  to  outdo  the 
other.  The  game  is  a  brief  one.  Before  one  can  get 
the  clew  to  it,  the  party  has  dispersed. 

Earlier  in  the  season  the  pretty  sparring  of  the 
males  is  the  chief  feature.  You  may  see  two  robins 
apparently  taking  a  walk  or  a  run  together  over  the 
sward  or  along  the  road;  only  first  one  bird  runs, 
and  then  the  other.  They  keep  a  few  feet  apart, 
stand  very  erect,  and  the  course  of  each  describes  the 
segment  of  an  arc  about  the  other,  thus :  — 


BIRD  COURTSHIP  47 

How  courtly  and  deferential  their  manners  toward 
each  other  are!  often  they  pipe  a  shrill,  fine  strain, 
audible  only  a  few  yards  away.  Then,  in  a  twink- 
ling, one  makes  a  spring  and  they  are  beak  to  beak, 
and  claw  to  claw,  as  they  rise  up  a  few  feet  into 
the  air.  But  usually  no  blow  is  delivered;  not  a 
feather  is  ruffled;  each,  I  suppose,  finds  the  guard  of 
the  other  perfect.  Then  they  settle  down  upon  the 
ground  again,  and  go  through  with  the  same  run- 
ning challenge  as  before.  How  their  breasts  glow  in 
the  strong  April  sunlight ;  how  perk  and  military  the 
bearing  of  each!  Often  they  will  run  about  each 
other  in  this  way  for  many  rods.  After  a  week  or  so 
the  males  seem  to  have  fought  all  their  duels,  when 
the  rush  and  racket  I  have  already  described  begin. 

The  bluebird  wins  his  mate  by  the  ardor  of  his 
attentions  and  the  sincerity  of  his  compliments,  and 
by  finding  a  house  ready  built  which  cannot  be  sur- 
passed. The  male  bluebird  is  usually  here  several 
days  before  the  female,  and  he  sounds  forth  his  note 
as  loudly  and  eloquently  as  he  can  till  she  appears. 
On  her  appearance  he  flies  at  once  to  the  box  or  tree 
cavity  upon  which  he  has  had  his  eye,  and,  as  he 
looks  into  it,  calls  and  warbles  in  his  most  persuasive 
tones.  The  female  at  such  times  is  always  shy  and 
backward,  and  the  contrast  in  the  manners  of  the 
two  birds  is  as  striking  as  the  contrast  in  their  colors. 
The  male  is  brilliant  and  ardent;  the  female  is  dim 
and  retiring,  not  to  say  indifferent.  She  may  taJce  a 


48  BIRD  COURTSHIP 

hasty  peep  into  the  hole  in  the  box  or  tree  and  then 
fly  away,  uttering  a  lonesome,  homesick  note.  Only 
by  a  wooing  of  many  days  is  she  to  be  fully  won. 

The  past  April  I  was  witness  one  Sunday  morning 
to  the  jealousies  that  may  rage  in  these  little  brown 
breasts.  A  pair  of  bluebirds  had  apparently  mated 
and  decided  to  occupy  a  woodpecker's  lodge  in  the 
limb  of  an  old  apple-tree  near  my  study.  But  that 
morning  another  male  appeared  on  the  scene,  and 
was  bent  on  cutting  the  first  male  out,  and  carry- 
ing off  his  bride.  I  happened  to  be  near  by  when 
the  two  birds  came  into  collision.  They  fell  to  the 
grass,  and  kept  their  grip  upon  each  other  for  half 
a  minute.  Then  they  separated,  and  the  first  up  flew 
to  the  hole  and  called  fondly  to  the  female.  This 
was  too  much  for  the  other  male,  and  they  clinched 
again  and  fell  to  the  ground  as  before.  There  they 
lay  upon  the  grass,  blue  and  brown  intermingled. 
But  not  a  feather  was  tweaked  out,  or  even  disturbed, 
that  I  could  see.  They  simply  held  each  other  down. 
Then  they  separated  again,  and  again  rushed  upon 
each  other.  The  battle  raged  for  about  fifteen  min- 
utes, when  one  of  the  males  —  which  one,  of  course, 
I  could  not  tell  —  withdrew  and  flew  to  a  box  under 
the  eaves  of  the  study,  and  exerted  all  the  eloquence 
he  possessed  to  induce  the  female  to  come  to  him 
there.  How  he  warbled  and  called,  and  lifted  his 
wings  and  flew  to  the  entrance  to  the  box  and  called 
i!  The  female  was  evidently  strongly  attracted; 


BIRD   COURTSHIP  49 

she  would  respond  and  fly  about  halfway  to  an 
apple-tree,  and  look  toward  him.  The  other  male, 
in  the  mean  time,  did  his  best  to  persuade  her  to 
cast  her  lot  with  him.  He  followed  her  to  the  tree 
toward  his  rival,  and  then  flew  back  to  the  nest  and 
spread  his  plumage  and  called  and  warbled,  oh,  so 
confidently,  so  fondly,  so  reassuringly!  When  the  fe- 
male would  return  and  peep  into  the  hole  in  the  tree, 
what  fine,  joyous  notes  he  would  utter!  then  he 
would  look  in  and  twinkle  his  wings,  and  say  some- 
thing his  rival  could  not  hear.  This  vocal  and  pan- 
tomimic contest  went  on  for  a  long  time.  The  fe- 
male was  evidently  greatly  shaken  in  her  allegiance 
to  the  male  in  the  old  apple-tree.  In  less  than  an 
hour  another  female  responded  to  the  male  who  had 
sought  the  eaves  of  the  study,  and  flew  with  him 
to  the  box.  Whether  this  was  their  first  meeting 
or  not  I  do  not  know,  but  it  was  clear  enough  that 
the  heart  of  the  male  was  fixed  upon  the  bride  of 
his  rival.  He  would  devote  himself  a  moment  to  the 
new-comer,  and  then  turn  toward  the  old  apple-tree 
and  call  and  lift  his  wings ;  then,  apparently  admon- 
ished by  the  bird  near  him,  he  would  turn  again  to 
her  and  induce  her  to  look  into  the  box,  and  would 
warble  fondly;  then  up  on  a  higher  branch  again, 
with  his  attention  directed  toward  his  first  love,  be- 
tween whom  and  himself  salutations  seemed  con- 
stantly passing.  This  little  play  went  on  for  some 
time,  when  the  two  females  came  into  collision,  and 


50  BIRD  COURTSHIP 

fell  to  the  ground  tweaking  each  other  spitefully. 
Then  the  four  birds  drifted  away  from  me  down  into 
the  vineyard,  where  the  males  closed  with  each  other 
again  and  fell  to  the  plowed  ground  and  lay  there 
a  surprisingly  long  time,  nearly  two  minutes,  as  we 
calculated.  Their  wings  were  outspread,  and  their 
forms  were  indistinguishable.  They  tugged  at  each 
other  most  doggedly;  one  or  the  other  brown  breast 
was  generally  turned  up,  partly  overlaid  by  a  blue 
coat.  They  were  determined  to  make  a  finish  of 
it  this  time,  but  which  got  the  better  of  the  fight 
I  could  not  tell.  But  it  was  the  last  battle ;  they 
finally  separated,  neither,  apparently,  any  the  worse 
for  the  encounter.  The  females  fought  two  more 
rounds,  the  males  looking  on  and  warbling  approv- 
ingly when  they  separated,  and  the  two  pairs  drifted 
away  in  different  directions.  The  next  day  they 
were  about  the  box  and  tree  again,  and  seemed  to 
have  definitely  settled  matters.  Who  won  and  who 
lost  I  do  not  know,  but  two  pairs  of  bluebirds  have 
since  been  very  busy  and  very  happy  about  the  two 
nesting-places.  One  of  the  males  I  recognize  as  a 
bird  that  appeared  early  in  March ;  I  recognize  him 
from  one  peculiar  note  in  the  midst  of  his  warble, 
a  note  that  suggests  a  whistle. 

The  matchmaking  of  the  high-holes,  which  often 
comes  under  my  observation,  is  in  marked  contrast 
to  that  of  the  robins  and  the  bluebirds.  There  does 
not  appear  to  be  any  anger  or  any  blows.  The  male 


BIRD  COURTSHIP  51 

or  two  males  will  alight  on  a  limb  in  front  of  the 
female,  and  go  through  with  a  series  of  bowings 
and  scrapings  that  are  truly  comical.  He  spreads 
his  tail,  he  puffs  out  his  breast,  he  throws  back  his 
head,  and  then  bends  his  body  to  the  right  and  to 
the  left,  uttering  all  the  while  a  curious  musical  hic- 
cough. The  female  confronts  him  unmoved,  but 
whether  her  attitude  is  critical  or  defensive,  I  can- 
not tell.  Presently  she  flies  away,  followed  by  her 
suitor  or  suitors,  and  the  little  comedy  is  enacted  on 
another  stump  or  tree.  Among  all  the  woodpeckers 
the  drum  plays  an  important  part  in  the  match- 
making. The  male  takes  up  his  stand  on  a  dry, 
resonant  limb,  or  on  the  ridgeboard  of  a  building, 
and  beats  the  loudest  call  he  is  capable  of.  The 
downy  woodpecker  usually  has  a  particular  branch 
to  which  he  resorts  for  advertising  his  matrimonial 
wants.  A  favorite  drum  of  the  high-holes  about  me 
is  a  hollow  wooden  tube,  a  section  of  a  pump,  which 
stands  as  a  bird-box  upon  my  summer-house.  It  is 
a  good  instrument;  its  tone  is  sharp  and  clear.  A 
high-hole  alights  upon  it,  and  sends  forth  a  rattle 
that  can  be  heard  a  long  way  off.  Then  he  lifts  up 
his  head  and  utters  that  long  April  call,  Wick,  wick, 
wick,  wick.  Then  he  drums  again.  If  the  female 
does  not  find  him,  it  is  not  because  he  does  not  make 
noise  enough.  But  his  sounds  are  all  welcome  to 
the  ear.  They  are  simple  and  primitive,  and  voice 
well  a  certain  sentiment  of  the  April  days.  As  I 


52  BIRD  COURTSHIP 

write  these  lines  I  hear  through  the  half-open  door 
his  call  come  up  from  a  distant  field.  Then  I  hear 
the  steady  hammering  of  one  that  has  been  for  three 
days  trying  to  penetrate  the  weather  boarding  of 
the  big  icehouse  by  the  river,  and  to  reach  the  saw- 
dust filling  for  a  nesting-place. 

Among  our  familiar  birds  the  matchmaking  of 
none  other  is  quite  so  pretty  as  that  of  the  goldfinch. 
The  goldfinches  stay  with  us  in  loose  flocks  and 
clad  in  a  dull-olive  suit  throughout  the  winter.  In 
May  the  males  begin  to  put  on  their  bright  summer 
plumage.  This  is  the  result  of  a  kind  of  super- 
ficial moulting.  Their  feathers  are  not  shed,  but 
their  dusky  covering  or  overalls  are  cast  off.  When 
the  process  is  only  partly  completed,  the  bird  has  a 
smutty,  unpresentable  appearance.  But  we  seldom 
see  them  at  such  times.  They  seem  to  retire  from 
society.  When  the  change  is  complete,  and  the  males 
have  got  their  bright  uniforms  of  yellow  and  black, 
the  courting  begins.  All  the  goldfinches  of  a  neigh- 
borhood collect  together  and  hold  a  sort  of  musical 
festival.  To  the  number  of  many  dozens  they  may 
be  seen  in  some  large  tree,  all  singing  and  calling 
in  the  most  joyous  and  vivacious  manner.  The 
males  sing,  and  the  females  chirp  and  call.  Whether 
there  is  actual  competition  on  a  trial  of  musical  abil- 
ities of  the  males  before  the  females  or  not,  I  do 
not  know.  The  best  of  feeling  seems  to  pervade  the 
company;  there  is  no  sign  of  quarreling  or  fight- 


BIRD  COURTSHIP  53 

ing ;  "  all  goes  merry  as  a  marriage  bell,"  and  the 
matches  seem  actually  to  be  made  during  these  musi- 
cal picnics.  Before  May  is  passed  the  birds  are  seen 
in  couples,  and  in  June  housekeeping  usually  be- 
gins.  This  I  call  the  ideal  of  love-making  among 
birds,  and  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  squabbles 
and  jealousies  of  most  of  our  songsters. 

I  have  known  the  goldfinches  to  keep  up  this 
musical  and  love-making  festival  through  three  con- 
secutive days  of  a  cold  northeast  rainstorm.  Be- 
draggled, but  ardent  and  happy,  the  birds  were  not 
to  be  dispersed  by  wind  or  weather. 

All  the  woodpeckers,  so  far  as  I  have  observed, 
drum  up  their  mates;  the  male  advertises  his  wants 
by  hammering  upon  a  dry,  resonant  limb,  when  in 
due  time  the  female  approaches  and  is  duly  courted 
and  won.  The  drumming  of  the  ruffed  grouse  is 
for  the  same  purpose;  the  female  hears,  concludes 
to  take  a  walk  that  way,  approaches  timidly,  is  seen 
and  admired,  and  the  match  is  made.  That  the 
male  accepts  the  first  female  that  offers  herself  is 
probable.  Among  all  the  birds  the  choice,  the  se- 
lection, seems  to  belong  to  the  female.  The  males 
court  promiscuously;  the  females  choose  discreetly. 
The  grouse,  unlike  the  woodpecker,  always  carries 
his  drum  with  him,  which  is  his  own  proud  breast; 
yet,  if  undisturbed,  he  selects  some  particular  log 
or  rock  in  the  woods  from  which  to  sound  forth  his 
willingness  to  wed.  What  determines  the  choice  of 


54  BIRD  COURTSHIP 

the  female  it  would  be  hard  to  say.  Among  song- 
birds, it  is  probably  the  best  songster,  or  the  one 
whose  voice  suits  her  taste  best.  Among  birds 
of  bright  plumage,  it  is  probably  the  gayest  dress; 
among  the  drummers,  she  is  doubtless  drawn  by 
some  quality  of  the  sound.  Our  ears  and  eyes  are  too 
coarse  to  note  any  differences  in  these  things,  but 
doubtless  the  birds  themselves  note  differences. 

Birds  show  many  more  human  traits  than  do  quad- 
rupeds. That  they  actually  fall  in  love  admits  of 
no  doubt;  that  there  is  a  period  of  courtship,  during 
which  the  male  uses  all  the  arts  he  is  capable  of  to 
win  his  mate,  is  equally  certain ;  that  there  are  jeal- 
ousies and  rivalries,  and  that  the  peace  of  families  is 
often  rudely  disturbed  by  outside  males  or  females 
is  a  common  observation.  The  females,  when  they 
come  to  blows,  fight  much  more  spitefully  and  reck- 
lessly than  do  the  males.  One  species  of  bird  has 
been  known  to  care  for  the  young  of  another  species 
which  had  been  made  orphans.  The  male  turkey 
will  sometimes  cover  the  eggs  of  his  mate  and  hatch 
and  rear  the  brood  alone.  Altogether,  birds  often 
present  some  marked  resemblances  in  their  actions 
to  men,  when  love  is  the  motive. 

Mrs.  Martin,  in  her  "  Home  Life  on  an  Ostrich 
Farm,"  relates  this  curious  incident:  — 

"  One  undutiful  hen  —  having  apparently  im- 
bibed advanced  notions  —  absolutely  refused  to  sit 
at  all,  and  the  poor  husband,  determined  not  to  be 


BIRD  COURTSHIP  55 

disappointed  of  his  little  family,  did  all  the  work 
himself,  sitting  bravely  and  patiently  day  and  night, 
though  nearly  dead  with  exhaustion,  till  the  chicks 
were  hatched  out.  The  next  time  this  pair  of  birds 
had  a  nest,  the  cock's  mind  was  firmly  made  up  that 
he  would  stand  no  more  nonsense.  He  fought  the 
hen  [kicked  her],  giving  her  so  severe  a  thrashing 
that  she  was  all  but  killed,  and  this  Petruchio-like 
treatment  had  the  desired  effect,  for  the  wife  never 
again  rebelled,  but  sat  submissively." 

In  the  case  of  another  pair  of  ostriches  of  which 
Mrs.  Martin  tells,  the  female  was  accidentally  killed, 
when  the  male  mourned  her  loss  for  over  two  years, 
and  would  not  look  at  another  female.  He  wan- 
dered up  and  down,  up  and  down,  the  length  of  his 
camp,  utterly  disconsolate.  At  last  he  mated  again 
with  a  most  magnificent  hen,  who  ruled  him  tyran- 
nically; he  became  the  most  hen-pecked,  or  rather 
hen-kicked,  of  husbands. 


THE  SNOW-WALKERS1 

track  of  the  red  squirrel  may  be  known  by 
JL  its  smaller  size.  He  is  more  common  and  less 
dignified  than  the  gray,  and  oftener  guilty  of  petty 
larceny  about  the  barns  and  grain-fields.  He  is  most 
abundant  in  old  barkpeelings,  and  low,  dilapidated 
hemlocks,  from  which  he  makes  excursions  to  the 
fields  and  orchards,  spinning  along  the  tops  of  the 
fences,  which  afford  not  only  convenient  lines  of 
communication,  but  a  safe  retreat  if  danger  threat- 
ens. He  loves  to  linger  about  the  orchard;  and, 
sitting  upright  on  the  topmost  stone  in  the  wall,  or 
on  the  tallest  stake  in  the  fence,  chipping  up  an 
apple  for  the  seeds,  his  tail  conforming  to  the  curve 
of  his  back,  his  paws  shifting  and  turning  the  apple, 
he  is  a  pretty  sight,  and  his  bright,  pert  appearance 
atones  for  all  the  mischief  he  does.  At  home,  in 
the  woods,  he  is  the  most  frolicsome  and  loquacious. 
The  appearance  of  anything  unusual,  if,  after  con- 
templating it  a  moment,  he  concludes  it  not  dan- 
gerous, excites  his  unbounded  mirth  and  ridicule, 
and  he  snickers  and  chatters,  hardly  able  to  contain1 
himself;  now  darting  up  the  trunk  of  a  tree  and 
squealing  in  derision,  then  hopping  into  position  on 

*  An  excerpt  from  a  chapter  in  Winter  Sunshine, 


THE  SNOW-WALKERS  57 

a  limb  and  dancing  to  the  music  of  his  own  cackle, 
and  all  for  your  special  benefit. 

There  is  something  very  human  in  this  apparent 
mirth  and  mockery  of  the  squirrels.  It  seems  to 
be  a  sort  of  ironical  laughter,  and  implies  self-con- 
scious pride  and  exultation  in  the  laugher.  "What 
a  ridiculous  thing  you  are,  to  be  sure!"  he  seems  to 
say;  "how  clumsy  and  awkward,  and  what  a  poor 
show  for  a  tail!  Look  at  me,  look  at  me!"  —  and 
he  capers  about  in  his  best  style.  Again,  he  would 
seem  to  tease  you  and  provoke  your  attention;  then 
suddenly  assumes  a  tone  of  good-natured,  childlike 
defiance  and  derision.  That  pretty  little  imp,  the 
chipmunk,  will  sit  on  the  stone  above  his  den  and 
defy  you,  as  plainly  as  if  he  said  so,  to  catch  him 
before  he  can  get  into  his  hole  if  you  can.  You 
hurl  a  stone  at  him,  and  "No  you  did  n't!"  comes 
up  from  the  depth  of  his  retreat. 

In  February  another  track  appears  upon  the 
snow,  slender  and  delicate,  about  a  third  larger  than 
that  of  the  gray  squirrel,  indicating  no  haste  or 
speed,  but,  on  the  contrary,  denoting  the  most  im- 
perturbable ease  and  leisure,  the  footprints  so  close 
together  that  the  trail  appears  like  a  chain  of  curi- 
ously carved  links.  Sir  Mephitis  mephitica,  or, 
in  plain  English,  the  skunk,  has  awakened  from  his 
six  weeks'  nap,  and  come  out  into  society  again. 
He  is  a  nocturnal  traveler,  very  bold  and  impudent, 
coming  quite  up  to  the  barn  and  outbuildings,  and 


58  THE  SNOW-WALKERS 

sometimes  taking  up  his  quarters  for  the  season  un- 
der the  haymow.  There  is  no  such  word  as  hurry 
in  his  dictionary,  as  you  may  see  by  his  path  upon 
the  snow.  He  has  a  very  sneaking,  insinuating 
way,  and  goes  creeping  about  the  fields  and  woods, 
never  once  in  a  perceptible  degree  altering  his  gait, 
and,  if  a  fence  crosses  his  course,  steers  for  a  break 
or  opening  to  avoid  climbing.  He  is  too  indolent 
even  to  dig  his  own  hole,  but  appropriates  that  of 
a  woodchuck,  or  hunts  out  a  crevice  in  the  rocks, 
from  which  he  extends  his  rambling  in  all  direc- 
tions, preferring  damp,  thawy  weather.  He  has 
very  little  discretion  or  cunning,  and  holds  a  trap 
in  utter  contempt,  stepping  into  it  as  soon  as  beside 
it,  relying  implicitly  for  defense  against  all  forms  of 
danger  upon  the  unsavory  punishment  he  is  capable 
of  inflicting.  He  is  quite  indifferent  to  both  man 
and  beast,  and  will  not  hurry  himself  to  get  out  of 
the  way  of  either.  Walking  through  the  summer 
fields  at  twilight,  I  have  come  near  stepping  upon 
him,  and  was  much  the  more  disturbed  of  the  two. 
When  attacked  in  the  open  fields  he  confounds  the 
plans  of  his  enemies  by  the  unheard-of  tactics  of 
exposing  his  rear  rather  than  his  front.  "Come  if 
you  dare,"  he  says,  and  his  attitude  makes  even 
the  farm-dog  pause.  After  a  few  encounters  of 
this  kind,  and  if  you  entertain  the  usual  hostility 
towards  him,  your  mode  of  attack  will  speedily  re- 
solve itself  into  moving  about  him  in  a  circle,  the 


THE  SNOW-WALKERS  59 

radius  of  which  will  be  the  exact  distance  at  which 
you  can  hurl  a  stone  with  accuracy  and  effect. 

He  has  a  secret  to  keep  and  knows  it,  and  is 
careful  not  to  betray  himself  until  he  can  do  so  with 
the  most  telling  effect.  I  have  known  him  to  pre- 
serve his  serenity  even  when  caught  in  a  steel  trap, 
and  look  the  very  picture  of  injured  innocence, 
manoeuvring  carefully  and  deliberately  to  extricate 
his  foot  from  the  grasp  of  the  naughty  jaws.  Do 
not  by  any  means  take  pity  on  him,  and  lend  a 
helping  hand! 

How  pretty  his  face  and  head!  How  fine  and 
delicate  his  teeth,  like  a  weasel's  or  cat's!  When 
about  a  third  grown,  he  looks  so  well  that  one  cov- 
ets him  for  a  pet.  He  is  quite  precocious,  however, 
and  capable,  even  at  this  tender  age,  of  making  a 
very  strong  appeal  to  your  sense  of  smell. 

No  animal  is  more  cleanly  in  its  habits  than  he. 
He  is  not  an  awkward  boy  who  cuts  his  own  face 
with  his  whip;  and  neither  his  flesh  nor  his  fur 
hints  the  weapon  with  which  he  is  armed.  The 
most  silent  creature  known  to  me,  he  makes  no 
sound,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  save  a  diffuse, 
impatient  noise,  like  that  produced  by  beating  your 
hand  with  a  whisk-broom,  when  the  farm-dog  has 
discovered  his  retreat  in  the  stone  fence.  He 
renders  himself  obnoxious  to  the  farmer  by  his  par- 
tiality for  hens'  eggs  and  young  poultry.  He  is  a 
confirmed  epicure,  and  at  plundering  hen-roosts  an 


60  THE  SNOW-WALKERS 

expert.  Not  the  full-grown  fowls  are  his  victims, 
but  the  youngest  and  most  tender.  At  night  Mother 
Hen  receives  under  her  maternal  wings  a  dozen 
newly  hatched  chickens,  and  with  much  pride  and 
satisfaction  feels  them  all  safely  tucked  away  in  her 
feathers.  In  the  morning  she  is  walking  about  dis- 
consolately, attended  by  only  two  or  three  of  all 
that  pretty  brood.  What  has  happened?  Where 
are  they  gone?  That  pickpocket,  Sir  Mephitis, 
could  solve  the  mystery.  Quietly  has  he  approached, 
under  cover  of  darkness,  and  one  by  one  relieved 
her  of  her  precious  charge.  Look  closely  and  you 
will  see  their  little  yellow  legs  and  beaks,  or  part 
of  a  mangled  form,  lying  about  on  the  ground.  Or, 
before  the  hen  has  hatched,  he  may  find  her  out, 
and,  by  the  same  sleight  of  hand,  remove  every  egg, 
leaving  only  the  empty  blood-stained  shells  to  wit- 
ness against  him.  The  birds,  especially  the  ground- 
builders,  suffer  in  like  manner  from  his  plundering 
propensities. 

The  secretion  upon  which  he  relies  for  defense, 
and  which  is  the  chief  source  of  his  unpopularity, 
while  it  affords  good  reasons  against  cultivating  him 
as  a  pet,  and  mars  his  attractiveness  as  game,  is  by 
no  means  the  greatest  indignity  that  can  be  offered^  ^y* 
to  a  nose.   It  is  a  rank,  living  smell,  and  has  none  y 
of  the  sickening  qualities  of  disease  or  putrefaction. 
Indeed,  I  think  a  good  smeller  will  enjoy  its  most 
refined  intensity.    It  approaches  the  sublime,  and 


THE  SNOW-WALKERS  61 

makes  the  nose  tingle.  It  is  tonic  and  bracing,  and, 
I  can  readily  believe,  has  rare  medicinal  qualities. 
I  do  not  recommend  its  use  as  eyewater,  though  an 
old  farmer  assures  me  it  has  undoubted  virtues  when 
thus  applied.  Hearing,  one  night,  a  disturbance 
among  his  hens,  he  rushed  suddenly  out  to  catch 
the  thief,  when  Sir  Mephitis,  taken  by  surprise,  and 
no  doubt  much  annoyed  at  being  interrupted,  dis- 
charged the  vials  of  his  wrath  full  in  the  farmer's 
face,  and  with  such  admirable  effect  that,  for  a  few 
moments,  he  was  completely  blinded,  and  powerless 
to  revenge  himself  upon  the  rogue,  who  embraced 
the  opportunity  to  make  good  his  escape;  but  he 
declared  that  afterwards  his  eyes  felt  as  if  purged 
by  fire,  and  his  sight  was  much  clearer. 


AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS1 

NE  sometimes  seems  to  discover  a  familiar  wild 
_s  flower  anew  by  coming  upon  it  in  some  pecu- 
liar and  striking  situation.  Our  columbine  is  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places  one  of  the  most  exquisitely 
beautiful  of  flowers;  yet  one  spring  day,  when  I  saw 
it  growing  out  of  a  small  seam  on  the  face  of  a  great 
lichen-covered  wall  of  rock,  where  no  soil  or  mould 
was  visible,  —  a  jet  of  foliage  and  color  shooting 
out  of  a  black  line  on  the  face  of  a  perpendicular 
mountain  wall  and  rising  up  like  a  tiny  fountain, 
its  drops  turning  to  flame-colored  jewels  that  hung 
V  and  danced  in  the  air  against  the  gray  rocky  sur- 
*  *  face,  —  its  beauty  became  something  magical  and 
audacious.  On  little  narrow  shelves  in  the  rocky 
wall  the  corydalis  was  blooming,  and  among  the 
loose  bowlders  at  its  base  the  blood-root  shone  con- 
spicuous, suggesting  snow  rather  than  anything  more 
sanguine. 

Certain  flowers  one  makes  special  expeditions  for 
every  season.  They  are  limited  in  their  ranges, 
and  must  generally  be  sought  for  in  particular 
haunts.  How  many  excursions  to  the  woods  does 
the  delicious  trailing  arbutus  give  rise  to!  How 

1  An  excerpt  from  a  chapter  in  Rivei  by. 


AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS        63 

can  one  let  the  spring  go  by  without  gathering  it 
himself  when  it  hides  in  the  moss!  There  are  arbu- 
tus days  in  one's  calendar,  days  when  the  trail- 
ing flower  fairly  calls  him  to  the  woods.  With  me, 
they  come  the  latter  part  of  April.  The  grass  is 
greening  here  and  there  on  the  moist  slopes  and  by 
the  spring  runs;  the  first  furrow  has  been  struck 
by  the  farmer;  the  liver-leaf  is  in  the  height  of  its 
beauty,  and  the  bright  constellations  of  the  blood- 
root  shine  out  here  and  there;  one  has  had  his  first 
taste  and  his  second  taste  of  the  spring  and  of  the 
woods,  and  his  tongue  is  sharpened  rather  than 
cloyed.  Now  he  will  take  the  most  delicious  and 
satisfying  draught  of  all,  the  very  essence  and  soul 
of  the  early  season,  of  the  tender  brooding  days, 
with  all  their  prophecies  and  awakenings,  in  the 
handful  of  trailing  arbutus  which  he  gathers  in  his 
walk.  At  the  mere  thought  of  it,  one  sees  the  sun- 
light flooding  the  woods,  smells  the  warm  earthy 
odors  which  the  heat  liberates  from  beneath  the  dry 
leaves,  hears  the  mellow  bass  of  the  first  bumble- 
bee, 

"  Rover  of  the  underwoods," 

or  the  finer  chord  of  the  adventurous  honey-bee 
seeking  store  for  his  empty  comb.  The  arriving 
swallows  twitter  above  the  woods;  the  first  che- 
wink  rustles  the  dry  leaves;  the  north  ward -bound 
thrushes,  the  hermit  and  the  gray -cheeked,  flit  here 


64        AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS 

and  there  before  you.  The  robin,  the  sparrow,  and 
the  bluebird  are  building  their  first  nests,  and  the 
first  shad  are  making  their  way  slowly  up  the  Hud- 
son. Indeed,  the  season  is  fairly  under  way  when 
the  trailing  arbutus  comes.  Now  look  out  for 
troops  of  boys  and  girls  going  to  the  woods  to  gather 
it!  and  let  them  look  out  that  in  their  greed  they 
do  not  exterminate  it.  Within  reach  of  our  large 
towns,  the  choicer  spring  wild  flowers  are  hunted 
mercilessly.  Every  fresh  party  from  town  raids 
them  as  if  bent  upon  their  destruction.  One  day, 
about  ten  miles  from  one  of  our  Hudson  River 
cities,  there  got  into  the  train  six  young  women 
loaded  down  with  vast  sheaves  and  bundles  of 
trailing  arbutus.  Each  one  of  them  had  enough  for 
forty.  They  had  apparently  made  a  clean  sweep  of 
the  woods.  It  was  a  pretty  sight,  —  the  pink  and 
white  of  the  girls  and  the  pink  and  white  of  the 
flowers!  and  the  car,  too,  was  suddenly  filled  with 
perfume,  —  the  breath  of  spring  loaded  the  air;  but 
I  thought  it  a  pity  to  ravish  the  woods  in  that  way. 
The  next  party  was  probably  equally  greedy,  and, 
because  a  handful  was  desirable,  thought  an  armful 
proportionately  so;  till,  by  and  by,  the  flower  will 
be  driven  from  those  woods. 

Another  flower  that  one  makes  special  excursions 
for  is  the  pond-lily.  The  pond-lily  is  a  star,  and 
easily  takes  the  first  place  among  lilies;  and  the  ex- 
peditions to  her  haunts,  and  the  gathering  her  where 


AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS        65 

she  rocks  upon  the  dark  secluded  waters  of  some 
pool  or  lakelet,  are  the  crown  and  summit  of  the 
floral  expeditions  of  summer.  It  is  the  expedition 
about  which  more  things  gather  than  almost  any 
other:  you  want  your  boat,  you  want  your  lunch, 
you  want  your  friend  or  friends  with  you.  You 
are  going  to  put  in  the  greater  part  of  the  day;  you 
are  going  to  picnic  in  the  woods,  and  indulge  in  a 
"green  thought  in  a  green  shade."  When  my  friend 
and  I  go  for  pond-lilies,  we  have  to  traverse  a  dis- 
tance of  three  miles  with  our  boat  in  a  wagon.  The 
road  is  what  is  called  a  "back  road,"  and  leads 
through  woods  most  of  the  way.  Black  Pond, 
where  the  lilies  grow,  lies  about  one  hundred  feet 
higher  than  the  Hudson,  from  which  it  is  separated 
by  a  range  of  rather  bold  wooded  heights,  one  of 
which  might  well  be  called  Mount  Hymettus,  for  I 
have  found  a  great  deal  of  wild  honey  in  the  forest 
that  covers  it.  The  stream  which  flows  out  of 
the  pond  takes  a  northward  course  for  two  or  three 
miles,  till  it  finds  an  opening  through  the  rocky 
hills,  when  it  makes  rapidly  for  the  Hudson.  Its 
career  all  the  way  from  the  lake  is  a  series  of  alter- 
nating pools  and  cascades.  Now  a  long,  deep,  level 
stretch,  where  the  perch  and  the  bass  and  the  pick- 
erel lurk,  and  where  the  willow-herb  and  the  royal 
osmunda  fern  line  the  shores;  then  a  sudden  leap 
of  eight,  ten,  or  fifteen  feet  down  rocks  to  another 
level  stretch,  where  the  water  again  loiters  and  suns 


66        AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS 

itself;  and  so  on  through  its  adventurous  course  till 
the  hills  are  cleared  and  the  river  is  in  sight.  Our 
road  leads  us  along  this  stream,  across  its  rude 
bridges,  through  dark  hemlock  and  pine  woods, 
under  gray,  rocky  walls,  now  past  a  black  pool,  then 
within  sight  or  hearing  of  a  foaming  rapid  or  fall, 
till  we  strike  the  outlet  of  the  long  level  that  leads 
to  the  lake.  In  this  we  launch  our  boat  and  paddle 
slowly  upward  over  its  dark  surface,  now  pushing 
our  way  through  half-submerged  treetops,  then 
ducking  under  the  trunk  of  an  overturned  tree  which 
bridges  the  stream  and  makes  a  convenient  way  for 
the  squirrels  and  wood-mice,  or  else  forcing  the  boat 
over  it  when  it  is  sunk  a  few  inches  below  the  sur- 
face. We  are  traversing  what  was  once  a  continu- 
ation of  the  lake;  the  forest  floor  is  as  level  as  the 
water  and  but  a  few  inches  above  it,  even  in  sum- 
mer; it  sweeps  back  a  half  mile  or  more,  densely 
covered  with  black  ash,  red  maple,  and  other  de- 
ciduous trees,  to  the  foot  of  the  rocky  hills  which 
shut  us  in.  What  glimpses  we  get,  as  we  steal 
along,  into  the  heart  of  the  rank,  dense,  silent 
woods!  I  carry  in  my  eye  yet  the  vision  I  had,  on 
one  occasion,  of  a  solitary  meadow  lily  hanging  like 
a  fairy  bell  there  at  the  end  of  a  chance  opening, 
where  a  ray  of  sunlight  fell  full  upon  it,  and  brought 
out  its  brilliant  orange  against  the  dark  green 
background.  It  appeared  to  be  the  only  bit  of  bright 
color  in  all  the  woods.  Then  the  song  of  a  single 


AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS        67 

hermit  thrush  immediately  after  did  even  more 
for  the  ear  than  the  lily  did  for  the  eye.  Presently 
the  swamp  sparrow,  one  of  the  rarest  of  the  spar- 
rows, was  seen  and  heard;  and  that  nest  there  in  a 
small  bough  a  few  feet  over  the  water  proves  to  be 
hers,  —  in  appearance  a  ground-bird's  nest  in  a 
bough,  with  the  same  four  speckled  eggs.  As  we 
come  in  sight  of  the  lilies,  where  they  cover  the 
water  at  the  outlet  of  the  lake,  a  brisk  gust  of  wind, 
as  if  it  had  been  waiting  to  surprise  us,  sweeps 
down  and  causes  every  leaf  to  leap  from  the  water 
and  show  its  pink  under  side.  Was  it  a  fluttering  of 
hundreds  of  wings,  or  the  clapping  of  a  multitude 
of  hands?  But  there  rocked  the  lilies  with  their 
golden  hearts  open  to  the  sun,  and  their  tender 
white  petals  as  fresh  as  crystals  of  snow.  What  a 
queenly  flower,  indeed,  the  type  of  unsullied  purity 
and  sweetness!  Its  root,  like  a  black,  corrugated, 
ugly  reptile,  clinging  to  the  slime,  but  its  flower  in 
purity  and  whiteness  like  a  star.  There  is  some- 
thing very  pretty  in  the  closed  bud  making  its  way 
up  through  the  water  to  meet  the  sun;  and  there  is 
something  touching  in  the  flower  closing  itself  up 
again  after  its  brief  career,  and  slowly  burying  itself 
beneath  the  dark  wave.  One  almost  fancies  a  sad, 
regretful  look  in  it  as  the  stem  draws  it  downward 
to  mature  its  seed  on  the  sunless  bottom.  The  pond- 
lily  is  a  flower  of  the  morning;  it  closes  a  little  after 
noon;  but  after  you  have  plucked  it  and  carried  it 


68        AMONG  THE  WILD  FLOWERS 

home,  it  still  feels  the  call  of  the  morning  sun,  and 
will  open  to  him,  if  you  give  it  a  good  chance.  Coil 
their  stems  up  in  the  grass  on  the  lawn,  where  the 
sun's  rays  can  reach  them,  and  sprinkle  them  copi- 
ously. By  the  time  you  are  ready  for  your  morning 
walk,  there  they  sit  upon  the  moist  grass,  almost  as 
charmingly  as  upon  the  wave. 

Our  more  choice  wild  flowers,  the  rarer  and  finer 
spirits  among  them,  please  us  by  their  individual 
beauty  and  charm;  others,  more  coarse  and  com- 
mon, delight  us  by  mass  and  profusion;  we  regard 
not  the  one,  but  the  many,  as  did  Wordsworth  his 
golden  daffodils :  — 

"  Ten  thousand  saw  I  at  a  glance 
Tossing  their  heads  in  sprightly  dance." 

Of  such  is  the  marsh  marigold,  giving  a  golden 
lining  to  many  a  dark,  marshy  place  in  the  leafless 
April  woods,  or  marking  a  little  watercourse  through 
a  greening  meadow  with  a  broad  line  of  new  gold. 
One  glances  up  from  his  walk,  and  his  eye  falls  upon 
something  like  fixed  and  heaped-up  sunshine  there 
beneath  the  alders,  or  yonder  in  the  freshening 
field. 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL1 

ONE  thing  we  may  affirm  about  the  universe  — 
it  is  logical;  the  conclusion  always  follows  from 
the  premises. 

The  lesson  which  life  repeats  and  constantly 
enforces  is  "look  under  foot."  You  are  always 
nearer  the  divine  and  the  true  sources  of  your 
power  than  you  think.  The  lure  of  the  distant  and 
the  difficult  is  deceptive.  The  great  opportunity  is 
where  you  are.  Do  not  despise  your  own  place  and 
hour.  Every  place  is  under  the  stars,  every  place  is 
the  centre  of  the  world.  Stand  in  your  own  door- 
yard  and  you  have  eight  thousand  miles  of  solid 
ground  beneath  you,  and  all  the  sidereal  splendors 
overhead.  The  morning  and  the  evening  stars  are 
no  more  in  the  heavens  and  no  more  obedient  to 
the  celestial  impulses  than  the  lonely  and  time- 
scarred  world  we  inhabit.  How  the  planet  thrills 
and  responds  to  the  heavenly  forces  and  occurrences 
we  little  know,  but  we  get  an  inkling  of  it  when  we 
see  the  magnetic  needle  instantly  affected  by  solar 
disturbances. 

Look  under  fpot.    Gold  and  diamonds  and 

1  An  excerpt  from  a  chapter  in  Leaf  and  Tendril. 


70  THE  DIVINE   SOIL 

precious  stones  come  out  of  the  ground;  they  do 
not  drop  upon  us  from  the  stars,  and  our  highest 
thoughts  are  in  some  way  a  transformation  or  a 
transmutation  of  the  food  we  eat.  The  mean  is  the 
divine  if  we  make  it  so.  The  child  surely  learns 
that  its  father  and  mother  are  the  Santa  Claus  that 
brought  the  gifts,  though  the  discovery  may  bring 
pain;  and  the  man  learns  to  see  providence  in  the 
great  universal  forces  of  nature,  in  the  winds  and 
the  rain,  in  the  soil  underfoot  and  in  the  cloud  over- 
head. What  these  forces  in  their  orderly  rounds 
do  not  bring  him,  he  does  not  expect.  The  farmer 
hangs  up  his  stocking  in  the  way  of  empty  bins  and 
barns,  and  he  knows  well  who  or  what  must  fill 
them.  The  Santa  Claus  of  the  merchant,  the  manu- 
facturer, the  inventor,  is  the  forces  and  conditions  all 
about  us  in  every-day  operation.  When  the  light- 
ning strikes  your  building  or  the  trees  on  your  lawn, 
you  are  at  least  reminded  that  you  do  not  live  in 
a  corner  outside  of  Jove's  dominions,  you  are  in 
the  circuit  of  the  great  forces.  If  you  are  eligible 
to  bad  fortune  where  you  stand,  you  are  equally 
eligible  to  good  fortune  there.  The  young  man 
who  went  West  did  well,  but  the  young  man  who  had 
the  Western  spirit  and  stayed  at  home  did  equally 
well.  To  evoke  a  spark  of  fire  out  of  a  flint  with  a 
bit  of  steel  is  the  same  thing  as  evoking  beautiful 
thoughts  from  homely  facts.  How  hard  it  is  for  us 
to  see  the  heroic  in  an  act  of  our  neighbor! 


THE   DIVINE   SOIL  71 


What  a  burden  science  took  upon  itself  when  it 
sought  to  explain  the  origin  of  man!  Religion  or 
theology  takes  a  short  cut  and  makes  quick  work 
of  it  by  regarding  man  as  the  result  of  the  special 
creative  act  of  a  supernatural  Being.  But  science 
takes  a  long  and  tedious  and  hazardous  way 
around  through  the  lowest  primordial  forms  of  life. 
It  seeks  to  trace  his  germ  through  the  abyss  of 
geologic  time,  where  all  is  dim  and  mysterious, 
through  countless  cycles  of  waiting  and  prepara- 
tion, where  the  slow,  patient  gods  of  evolution 
cherished  it  and  passed  it  on,  through  the  fetid 
carbon,  through  the  birth  and  decay  of  continents, 
through  countless  interchanges  and  readjustments 
of  sea  and  land,  through  the  clash  and  warring  of 
the  cosmic  forces,  through  good  and  evil  report, 
through  the  fish  and  the  reptile,  through  the  ape 
and  the  orang,  up  to  man  —  from  the  slime  at  the 
bottom  of  the  primordial  ocean  up  to  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth. Surely  one  may  say  with  Whitman,  — 

"Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me, 
Faithful  and  friendly  the  arms  that  have  helped  me." 

It  took  about  one  hundred  thousand  feet  of  sed- 
imentary rock,  laid  down  through  hundreds  of 
millions  of  years  in  the  bottom  of  the  old  seas,  all 
probably  the  leavings  of  minute  forms  of  life,  to 
make  a  foundation  upon  which  man  could  appear. 


72  THE   DIVINE  SOIL 

His  origin  as  revealed  by  science  fills  and  appalls 
the  imagination :  as  revealed  by  theology  it  simply 
baffles  and  dumfounds  one.  Science  deepens  the 
mystery  while  yet  it  gives  the  reason  and  the  imagi- 
nation something  to  go  upon;  it  takes  us  beyond 
soundings,  but  not  beyond  the  assurance  that  cause 
and  effect  are  still  continuous  there  beneath  us.  I 
like  to  think  that  man  has  traveled  that  long,  ad- 

^  venturous  road,  that  the  whole  creation  has  pulled 
together  to  produce  him.  It  is  a  road,  of  course, 
beset  with  pain  and  anguish,  beset  with  ugly  and 

>^  repellent  forms,  beset  with  riot  and  slaughter;  it 
leads  through  jungle  and  morass,  through  floods 
and  cataclysms,  through  the  hells  of  the  Meso- 
zoic  and  the  Cenozoic  periods,  but  it  leads  ever 
upward  and  onward. 

The  manward  impulse  in  creation  has  doubtless 
been  checked  many  times,  but  never  lost ;  all  forms 
conspired  to  further  it,  and  it  seemed  to  have  taken 
the  push  and  the  aspiration  out  of  each  order  as 
it  passed  on,  dooming  it  henceforth  to  a  round  of 
life  without  change  or  hope  of  progress,  leaving 
the  fish  to  continue  fish,  the  reptiles  to  continue 
reptiles,  the  apes  to  continue  apes;  it  took  all  the 
heart  and  soul  of  each  to  feed  and  continue  the 
central  impulse  that  was  to  eventuate  in  man. 

I  fail  to  see  why  our  religious  brethren  cannot  find 
in  this  history  or  revelation  as  much  room  for  crea- 
tive, energy,  as  large  a  factor  of  the  mysterious  and 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL  73 

superhuman,  as  in  the  myth  of  Genesis.  True  it  is 
that  it  fixes  our  attention  upon  this  world  and  upon 
forces  with  which  we  are  more  or  less  familiar,  but 
it  implies  an  element  or  a  power  before  which  we 
stand  helpless  and  dumb.  What  fathered  this  man- 
impulse,  what  launched  this  evolutionary  process, 
what  or  who  stamped  upon  the  first  protoplasm 
the  aspiration  to  be  man,  and  never  let  that  aspira- 
tion sleep  through  all  the  tremendous  changes  of 
those  incalculable  geologic  ages  ?  What  or  who  first 
planted  the  seed  of  the  great  biological  tree,  and 
determined  all  its  branchings  and  the  fruit  it  should 
bear?  If  you  must  have  a  God,  either  apart  from 
or  imminent  in  creation,  it  seems  to  me  that  there 
is  as  much  need  of  one  here  as  in  the  Mosaic  cos- 
mology. The  final  mystery  cannot  be  cleared  up. 
We  can  only  drive  it  to  cover.  How  the  universe 
came  to  be  what  it  is,  and  how  man  came  to  be 
man,  who  can  tell  us? 

That  somewhere  in  my  line  of  descent  was  an 
ancestor  that  lived  in  trees  and  had  powerful  arms 
and  weaker  legs,  that  his  line  began  in  a  creature 
that  lived  on  the  ground,  and  his  in  one  that  lived 
in  the  mud,  or  in  the  sea,  and  his,  or  its,  sprang 
from  a  germ  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  but  deepens 
the  mystery  of  the  being  that  is  now  here  and  can 
look  back  and  speculate  over  the  course  he  has 
probably  come;  it  only  directs  attention  to  ugly 
facts,  to  material  things,  to  the  every -day  process 


74  THE  DIVINE  SOIL 

of  evolution,  instead  of  to  the  far  away,  the  un- 
known, or  the  supernatural. 

How  the  organic  came  to  bud  and  grow  from  the 
inorganic,  who  knows?  Yet  it  must  have  done  so. 
We  seem  compelled  to  think  of  an  ascending  series 
from  nebular  matter  up  to  the  spirituality  of  man, 
each  stage  in  the  series  resting  upon  or  growing 
out  of  the  one  beneath  it.  Creation  or  develop- 
ment must  be  continuous.  There  are  and  can  be 
no  breaks.  The  inorganic  is  already  endowed  with 
chemical  and  molecular  life.  The  whole  universe 
is  alive,  and  vibrates  with  impulses  too  fine  for 
our  dull  senses;  but  in  chemical  affinity,  in  crys- 
tallization, in  the  persistence  of  force,  in  electri- 
city, we  catch  glimpses  of  a  kind  of  vitality  that 
is  preliminary  to  all  other.  I  never  see  fire  burn, 
or  water  flow,  or  the  frost-mark  on  the  pane, 
that  I  am  not  reminded  of  something  as  myste- 
rious as  life.  How  alive  the  flame  seems,  how 
alive  the  water,  how  marvelous  the  arborescent  etch- 
ings of  the  frost!  Is  there  a  principle  of  fire? 
Is  there  a  principle  of  crystallization?  Just  as 
much  as  there  is  a  principle  of  life.  The  mind, 
in  each  case,  seems  to  require  something  to  lay 
hold  of  as  a  cause.  Why  these  wonderful  star 
forms  of  the  snowflake?  Why  these  exact  geo- 
metric forms  of  quartz  crystals  ?  The  gulf  between 
disorganized  matter  and  the  crystal  seems  to  me 
as  great  as  that  between  the  organic  and  the  inor- 


THE  DIVINE   SOIL  75 

ganic.  If  we  did  not  every  day  witness  the  passage, 
we  could  not  believe  it.  The  gulf  between  the  crys- 
tal and  the  cell  we  have  not  seen  cleared,  and 
man  has  not  yet  been  able  to  bridge  it,  and  may 
never  be,  but  it  has  been  bridged,  and  I  dare  say 
without  any  more  miracle  than  hourly  goes  on 
around  us.  The  production  of  water  from  two 
invisible  gases  is  a  miracle  to  me.  When  water  ap- 
peared (what  made  it  appear  ?)  and  the  first  cloud 
floated  across  the  blue  sky,  life  was  not  far  off,  if 
it  was  not  already  there.  Some  morning  in  spring 
when  the  sun  shone  across  the  old  Azoic  hills,  at 
some  point  where  the  land  and  sea  met,  life  began 
—  the  first  speck  of  protoplasm  appeared.  Call  it 
the  result  of  the  throb  or  push  of  the  creative 
energy  that  pervades  all  things,  and  whose  action 
is  continuous  and  not  intermittent,  since  we  are 
compelled  to  presuppose  such  energy  to  account 
for  anything,  even  our  own  efforts  to  account  for 
things.  An  ever  active  vital  force  pervades  the 
universe,  and  is  felt  and  seen  in  all  things,  from 
atomic  attraction  and  repulsion  up  to  wheeling  suns 
and  systems.  The  very  processes  of  thought  seem 
to  require  such  premises  to  go  upon.  There  is  a 
reason  for  the  universe  as  we  find  it,  else  man's  rea- 
son is  a  delusion,  and  delusion  itself  is  a  meaning- 
less term.  The  uncaused  is  unthinkable;  thought 
can  find  neither  beginning  nor  ending  to  the  uni- 
verse because  it  cannot  find  the  primal  cause.  Can 


76  THE   DIVINE   SOIL 

we  think  of  a  stick  with  only  one  end?  We 
have  to  if  we  compass  time  in  thought,  or  space, 
either. 


So  far  as  science  can  find  out,  sentience  is  a  pro- 
perty of  matter  which  is  evolved  under  certain 
conditions,  and  though  science  itself  has  not  yet 
been  able  to  reproduce  these  conditions,  it  still 
believes  in  the  possibility.  If  life  was  not  poten- 
tial in  the  inorganic  world,  how  is  it  possible  to 
account  for  it  ?  It  is  not  a  graft,  it  is  more  like  a 
begetting.  Nature  does  not  work  by  prefixes  and 
suffixes,  but  by  unfolding  and  ever  unfolding,  or 
developing  out  of  latent  innate  powers  and  possi- 
bilities; —  an  inward  necessity  always  working, 
but  never  an  external  maker.  It  is  no  help  to  fancy 
that  life  may  have  been  brought  to  the  earth  by 
a  falling  meteorite  from  some  other  sphere.  How 
did  life  originate  upon  that  other  sphere?  It  must 
have  started  here  as  surely  as  fire  started  here.  We 
feign  that  Prometheus  stole  the  first  fire  from 
heaven,  but  it  sleeps  here  all  about  us,  and  can  be 
evoked  any  time  and  anywhere.  It  sleeps  in  all 
forms  of  force.  A  falling  avalanche  of  rocks  turns 
to  flame;  the  meteor  in  the  air  becomes  a  torch; 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL  77 

the  thunderbolt  is  a  huge  spark.  So  life,  no  doubt, 
slept  in  the  inorganic,  and  was  started  by  the 
reverse  of  friction,  namely,  by  brooding. 

When  the  earth  becomes  lifeless  again,  as  it  surely 
must  in  time,  then  the  cycle  will  be  repeated,  a  col- 
lision will  develop  new  energy  and  new  worlds, 
and  out  of  this  newness  will  again  come  life. 

It  is  highly  probable  that  a  million  years  elapsed 
between  the  time  when  the  ancestor  of  man  began 
to  assume  the  human  form  and  the  dawn  of  history. 
Try  to  think  of  that  time  and  of  the  struggle  of 
this  creature  upward;  of  the  pain,  the  suffering, 
the  low  bestial  life,  the  warrings,  the  defeats,  the 
slow,  infinitely  slow  gains,  of  his  deadly  enemies  in 
other  animals,  of  the  repeated  changes  of  climate 
of  the  northern  hemisphere  from  subtropical  to 
subarctic  —  the  land  at  one  time  for  thousands  of 
years  buried  beneath  an  ice  sheet  a  mile  or  more 
thick,  followed  by  a  cycle  of  years  of  almost  trop- 
ical warmth  even  in  Greenland  —  and  all  of  this 
before  man  had  yet  got  off  of  "  all  fours,"  and  stood 
upright  and  began  to  make  rude  tools  and  rude 
shelters  from  the  storms.  The  Tertiary  period,  early 
in  which  the  first  rude  ancestor  of  man  seems  to 
have  appeared,  is  less  than  one  week  of  the  great 
geologic  year  of  the  earth's  history  —  a  week  of 
about  five  days.  These  days  the  geologists  have 
named  Eocene,  Oligocene,  Miocene,  Pliocene,  and 
Pleistocene,  each  one  of  these  days  covering,  no 


78  THE  DI\7INE  SOIL 

doubt,  a  million  years  or  more.  The  ancestor  of  man 
probably  took  on  something  like  the  human  form  on 
the  third,  or  Miocene,  day.  The  other  and  earlier 
fifty  or  more  weeks  of  the  great  geologic  year  gradu- 
ally saw  the  development  of  the  simpler  forms  of  life, 
till  we  reach  the  earliest  mammals  and  reptiles  in  the 
Permian,  about  the  forty-eighth  or  forty-ninth  week 
of  the  great  year.  The  laying  down  of  the  coal  mea- 
sures, Huxley  thinks,  must  have  taken  six  millions 
of  years.  Well,  the  Lord  allowed  himself  enough 
time.  Evidently  he  was  in  no  hurry  to  see  man  cut- 
ting his  fantastic  tricks  here  upon  the  surface  of  the 
planet.  A  hundred  million  years,  more  or  less,  what 
of  it?  Did  the  globe  have  to  ripen  all  those  cycles 
upon  cycles,  like  the  apple  upon  the  tree  ?  bask  in 
the  sidereal  currents,  work  and  ferment  in  the  sea 
of  the  hypothetical  ether  before  the  gross  matter 
could  evolve  the  higher  forms  of  life?  Probably 
every  unicellular  organism  that  lived  and  died  in 
the  old  seas  helped  prepare  the  way  for  man, 
contributed  something  to  the  fund  of  vital  energy 
of  the  globe  upon  which  man  was  finally  to  draw. 

How  life  has  had  to  adjust  itself  to  the  great 
cosmic  changes!  The  delays  must  have  been  in- 
calculable. The  periodic  refrigeration  of  the  north- 
ern hemisphere,  which  brought  on  the  ice  age 
several  times  during  each  one  of  the  Eocene  and 
Miocene  days,  must  have  delayed  the  development 
of  life  as  we  know  it,  enormously. 


THE  DIVINE  SOIL  79 


From  nebula  to  nebula  —  these  are  the  hours 
struck  by  the  clock  of  eternity :  from  the  dissipation 
of  the  solar  systems  into  nebular  gas  by  their  falling 
together  to  their  condensation  again  into  suns  and 
worlds  by  the  action  of  physical  laws  —  thousands 
of  millions  of  years  in  each  hour,  and  the  hours 
infinite  in  number.  This  is  a  hint  of  eternity.  How 
many  times,  then,  there  must  have  been  a  world 
like  this  evolved  in  the  course  of  this  running  down 
and  winding  up  of  the  great  clock,  with  beings  like 
these  we  now  behold !  how  many  such  worlds  and 
such  beings  there  must  now  be  in  the  universe,  and 
have  always  been !  Can  you  think  of  the  number  ? 
Not  till  you  can  think  of  infinity.  The  duration  of 
life  upon  the  globe,  to  say  nothing  of  man's  little 
span,  is  hardly  a  tick  of  this  clock  of  eternity,  and 
the  repetition  of  the  birth  and  dissipations  of  sys- 
tems is  well  symbolized  by  the  endless  striking  or 
ticking  of  a  clock. 

Then  sooner  or  later  comes  the  thought,  What 
is  it  all  for  ?  and  from  the  great  abysm  comes  back 
the  echo,  "  What  for  ?  "  Is  it  our  human  limitations, 
the  discipline  of  this  earthly  life,  when  we  have  to 
count  the  cost  and  ask  what  it  is  for,  that  makes 
us  put  the  question  to  the  Infinite?  When  the 
cosmic  show  is  over,  what  is  the  gain  ?  When  our 
universe  is  again  a  blank,  who  or  what  will  have 


80  THE   DIVINE  SOIL 

reaped  the  benefit  ?  Will  the  moral  order  which  has 
been  so  slowly  and  painfully  evolved,  and  which  so 
many  souls  have  struggled  to  live  up  to,  still  go  on  ? 
Where  ?  with  whom  ?  I  seem  to  see  dimly  that  you 
cannot  bring  the  Infinite  to  book,  that  you  cannot 
ask,  "  What  for  ?  "  of  the  All,  —  of  that  which  has 
neither  beginning  nor  end,  neither  centre  nor  cir- 
cumference, neither  fulfillment  nor  design,  which 
knows  neither  failure  nor  success,  neither  loss  nor 
gain,  and  which  is  complete  in  and  of  itself. 

We  are  tied  to  the  sphere,  its  laws  shape  our 
minds,  we  cannot  get  away  from  it  and  see  it  in 
perspective;  away  from  it  there  is  no  direction;  at 
either  pole  on  its  surface  there  is  the  contradiction 
of  the  sky  being  always  overhead.  We  are  tied  to 
the  Infinite  in  the  same  way.  We  are  part  of  it,  but 
may  not  measure  it.  Our  boldest  thought  comes 
back  like  a  projectile  fired  into  the  heavens  — 
the  curve  of  the  infinite  sphere  holds  us.  I  know 
I  am  trying  to  say  the  unsayable.  I  would  fain 
indicate  how  human  and  hopeless  is  our  question, 
"  What  for  ?  "  when  asked  of  the  totality  of  things. 
There  is  no  totality  of  things.  To  say  that  there  is, 
does  not  express  it.  To  say  there  is  not,  does  not 
express  it.  To  say  that  the  universe  was  created, 
does  not  express  the  mystery;  to  say  that  it  was 
not  created,  but  always  existed,  does  not  express 
it  any  nearer.  To  say  that  the  heavens  are  over- 
head is  only  half  the  truth ;  they  are  underfoot  also. 


THE   DIVINE  SOIL  81 

Down  is  toward  the  centre  of  the  earth,  but  go  on 
through  and  come  out  at  the  surface  on  the  other 
side,  and  which  way  is  down  then? 

The  Unspeakable  will  not  be  spoken. 

In  the  light  of  science  we  must  see  that  life  and 
progress  and  evolution  and  the  moral  order  must 
go  on  and  on  somewhere,  that  the  birth  of  systems 
and  the  evolution  of  planets  must  and  does  con- 
tinue, and  always  has  continued;  that  if  one  sun 
fades,  another  blazes  out;  that  as  there  must  have 
been  an  infinite  number  (how  can  there  be  an  in- 
finite number?  where  is  the  end  of  the  endless?) 
of  worlds  in  the  past,  so  there  will  be  an  infinite 
number  in  the  future ;  that  if  the  moral  order  and 
the  mathematical  order  and  the  intellectual  order 
disappear  from  one  planet,  they  will  appear  in  due 
time  on  another. 

All  that  which  in  our  limited  view  of  nature  we 
call  waste  and  delay  —  how  can  such  terms  apply 
to  the  Infinite?  Can  we  ever  speak  truly  of  the 
Infinite  in  terms  of  the  finite  ?  To  be  sure,  we  have 
no  other  terms,  and  can  never  have.  Then  let  us 
be  silent  and  —  reverent 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN1 

rMHE  difference  between  a  precious  stone  and  a 
JL  common  stone  is  not  an  essential  difference  — 
not  a  difference  of  substance,  but  of  arrangement  of 
the  particles  —  the  crystallization.  In  substance 
charcoal  and  the  diamond  are  one,  but  in  form  and 
effect  how  widely  they  differ.  The  pearl  contains 
nothing  that  is  not  found  in  the  coarsest  oyster  shell. 

Two  men  have  the  same  thoughts ;  they  use  about 
the  same  words  in  expressing  them;  yet  with  one 
^x  the  product  is  real  literature,  with  the  other  it  is  a 
platitude. 

The  difference  is  all  in  the  presentation;  a  finer 
and  more  compendious  process  has  gone  on  in  the 
one  case  than  in  the  other.  The  elements  are  better 
fused  and  welded  together;  they  are  in  some  way 
heightened  and  intensified.  Is  not  here  a  clue  to 
what  we  mean  by  style  ?  Style  transforms  common 
quartz  into  an  Egyptian  pebble.  We  are  apt  to  think 
of  style  as  something  external,  that  can  be  put  on, 
something  in  and  of  itself.  But  it  is  not;  it  is  in  the 

1  An  excerpt  from  a  chapter  in  Literary  Values. 


STYLE    AND   THE   MAN  83 

inmost  texture  of  the  substance.  Choice  words, 
faultless  rhetoric,  polished  periods,  are  only  the  acci- 
dents of  style.  Indeed,  perfect  workmanship  is  one 
thing  ;  style,  as  the  great  writers  have  it,  is  quite 
another.  It  may,  and  often  does,  go  with  faulty 
workmanship.  It  is  the  use  of  words  in  a  fresh  and 
vital  way,  so  as  to  give  us  a  vivid  sense  of  a  new 
spiritual  force  and  personality.  In  the  best  work  the 
style  is  found  and  hidden  in  the  matter. 

If  a  writer  does  not  bring  a  new  thought,  he  must 
at  least  bring  a  new  quality,  —  he  must  give  a  fresh, 
new  flavor  to  the  old  thoughts.  Style  or  quality  will 
keep  a  man's  work  alive  whose  thought  is  essentially 
commonplace,  as  is  the  case  with  Addison ;  and  Ar- 
nold justly  observes  of  the  poet  Gray  that  his  gift 
of  style  doubles  his  force  and  "  raises  him  to  a  rank 
beyond  what  his  natural  richness  and  power  seem  to 
warrant." 

There  is  the  correct,  conventional,  respectable  and 
scholarly  use  of  language  of  the  mass  of  writers,  and 
there  is  the  fresh,  stimulating,  quickening  use  of 
it  of  the  man  of  genius.  How  apt  and  racy  and  tell- 
ing is  often  the  language  of  unlettered  persons;  the 
born  writer  carries  this  same  gift  into  a  higher 
sphere.  There  is  a  passage  in  one  of  Emerson's 
early  letters,  written  when  he  was  but  twenty-four, 
and  given  by  Mr.  Cabot  in  his  Memoir,  which  shows 
how  clearly  at  that  age  Emerson  discerned  the  secret 
of  good  writing  and  good  preaching. 


84  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

"  I  preach  half  of  every  Sunday.  When  I  attended 
church  on  the  other  half  of  a  Sunday,  and  the  image 
in  the  pulpit  was  all  of  clay,  and  not  of  tunable 
metal,  I  said  to  myself  that  if  men  would  avoid  that 
general  language  and  general  manner  in  which  they 
strive  to  hide  all  that  is  peculiar,  and  would  say  only 
what  is  uppermost  in  their  own  minds,  after  their 
own  individual  manner,  every  man  would  be  inter- 
esting. .  .  .  But  whatever  properties  a  man  of  nar- 
row intellect  feels  to  be  peculiar  he  studiously  hides ; 
he  is  ashamed  or  afraid  of  himself,  and  all  his  com- 
munications to  men  are  unskillful  plagiarisms  from 
the  common  stock  of  thought  and  knowledge,  and 
he  is  of  course  flat  and  tiresome." 

The  great  mass  of  the  writing  and  sermonizing  of 
any  age  is  of  the  kind  here  indicated ;  it  is  the  result 
of  the  machinery  of  culture  and  of  books  and  the 
schools  put  into  successful  operation.  But  now  and 
then  a  man  appears  whose  writing  is  vital ;  his  page 
may  be  homely,  but  it  is  alive;  it  is  full  of  personal 
magnetism.  The  writer  does  not  merely  give  us 
what  he  thinks  or  knows ;  he  gives  us  himself.  There 
is  nothing  secondary  or  artificial  between  himself 
and  his  reader.  It  is  books  of  this  kind  that  man- 
kind does  not  willingly  let  die.  Some  minds  are  like 
an  open  fire,  —  how  direct  and  instant  our  com- 
munication with  them;  how  they  interest  us;  there 
are  no  screens  or  disguises;  we  see  and  feel  the  vital 
play  of  their  thought;  we  are  face  to  face  with  their 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  85 

spirits.  Indeed  all  good  literature,  whether  poetry 
or  prose,  is  the  open  fire;  there  is  directness,  reality, 
charm;  we  get  something  at  first-hand  that  warms 
and  stimulates. 

In  literature  proper  our  interest,  I  think,  is  always 
in  the  writer  himself,  —  his  quality,  his  personality, 
his  point  of  view.  We  may  fancy  that  we  care  only 
for  the  subject-matter;  but  the  born  writer  makes 
any  subject  interesting  to  us  by  his  treatment  of  it 
or  by  the  personal  element  he  infuses  into  it.  When 
our  concern  is  primarily  with  the  subject-matter, 
with  the  fact  or  the  argument,  or  with  the  informa- 
tion conveyed,  then  we  are  not  dealing  with  literature 
in  the  strict  sense.  It  is  not  so  much  what  the  writer 
tells  us  that  makes  literature,  as  the  way  he  tells 
it;  or  rather,  it  is  the  degree  in  which  he  imparts  to 
it  some  rare  personal  quality  or  charm  that  is  the  gift 
of  his  own  spirit,  something  which  cannot  be  de- 
tached  from  the  work  itself,  and  which  is  as  inherent 
as  the  sheen  of  a  bird's  plumage,  as  the  texture  of 
a  flower's  petal.  There  is  this  analogy  in  nature. 
The  hive  bee  does  not  get  honey  from  the  flowers; 
honey  is  a  product  of  the  bee.  What  she  gets  from 
the  flowers  is  mainly  sweet  water  or  nectar;  this  she 
puts  through  a  process  of  her  own,  and  to  it  adds  a 
minute  drop  of  her  own  secretion,  formic  acid.  It 
is  her  special  personal  contribution  that  converts  the 
nectar  into  honey. 

In  the  work  of  the  literary  artist,  common  facts 


86  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

and  experiences  are  changed  and  heightened  in  the 
same  way.  Sainte-Beuve,  speaking  of  certain  parts 
of  Rousseau's  "  Confessions,"  says,  "  Such  pages 
were,  in  French  literature,  the  discovery  of  a  new 
world,  a  world  of  sunshine  and  of  freshness,  which 
men  had  near  them  without  having  perceived  it." 
They  had  not  perceived  it  because  they  had  not  had 
Rousseau's  mind  to  mirror  it  for  them.  The  sunshine 
and  the  freshness  were  a  gift  of  his  spirit.  The  new 
world  was  the  old  world  in  a  new  light.  What 
charmed  them  was  a  quality  personal  to  Rousseau. 
Nature  they  had  always  had,  but  not  the  Rousseau 
sensibility  to  nature.  The  same  may  be  said  of  more 
recent  writers  upon  outdoor  themes.  Readers  fancy 
that  in  the  works  of  Thoreau  or  of  Jefferies  some  new 
charm  or  quality  of  nature  is  disclosed,  that  some- 
thing hidden  in  field  or  wood  is  brought  to  light. 
They  do  not  see  that  what  they  are  in  love  with  is 
the  mind  or  spirit  of  the  writer  himself.  Thoreau 
does  not  interpret  nature,  but  nature  interprets  him. 
The  new  thing  disclosed  in  bird  and  flower  is  simply 
a  new  sensibility  to  these  objects  in  the  beholder. 
In  morals  and  ethics  the  same  thing  is  true.  Let 
an  essayist  like  Dr.  Johnson  or  Arthur  Helps  state  a 
principle  or  an  idea  and  it  has  a  certain  value;  let 
an  essayist  like  Ruskin  or  Emerson  or  Carlyle  state 
the  same  principle  and  it  has  an  entirely  different 
value,  makes  an  entirely  different  impression,  —  the 
qualities  of  mind  and  character  of  these  writers  are 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  87 

so  different.     The  reader's  relation  with  them  is 
much  more  intimate  and  personal. 

It  is  quality  of  mind  which  makes  the  writings 
of  Burke  rank  above  those  of  Gladstone,  Ruskin's 
criticism  above  that  of  Hamerton,  Froude's  histories 
above  Freeman's,  Kenan's  "  Life  of  Jesus "  above 
that  of  Strauss;  which  makes  the  pages  of  Goethe, 
Coleridge,  Lamb,  literature  in  a  sense  that  the  works 
of  many  able  minds  are  not.  These  men  impart 
something  personal  and  distinctive  to  the  language 
they  use.  They  make  the  words  their  own.  The 
literary  quality  is  not  something  put  on.  It  is  not 
of  the  hand,  it  is  of  the  mind;  it  is  not  of  the  mind, 
but  of  the  soul;  it  is  of  whatever  is  most  vital  and 
characteristic  in  the  writer.  It  is  confined  to  no 
particular  manner  and  to  no  particular  matter.  It 
may  be  the  gift  of  writers  of  widely  different  man- 
ners —  of  Carlyle  as  well  as  of  Arnold ;  and  in  men 
of  similar  manners,  one  may  have  it  and  the  other 
may  not.  It  is  as  subtle  as  the  tone  of  the  voice  or 
the  glance  of  the  eye.  Quality  is  the  one  thing  in 
life  that  cannot  be  analyzed,  and  it  is  the  one  thing 
in  art  that  cannot  be  imitated.  A  man's  manner 
may  be  copied,  but  his  style,  his  charm,  his  real 
value,  can  only  be  parodied.  In  the  conscious  or 
unconscious  imitations  of  the  major  poets  by  the 
minor,  we  get  only  a  suggestion  of  the  manner  of 
the  former;  their  essential  quality  cannot  be  repro- 
duced. 


88  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

English  literature  is  full  of  imitations  of  the  Greek 
poets,  but  that  which  the  Greek  poets  did  not  and 
could  not  borrow  they  cannot  lend;  their  quality 
stays  with  them.  The  charm  of  spoken  discourse 
is  largely  in  the  personal  quality  of  the  speaker  — 
something  intangible  to  print.  When  we  see  the 
thing  in  print,  we  wonder  how  it  could  so  have 
charmed  or  moved  us.  To  convey  this  charm,  this 
aroma  of  the  man,  to  the  written  discourse  is  the 
triumph  of  style.  A  recent  French  critic  says  of 
Madame  de  Stael  that  she  had  no  style;  she  wrote 
just  as  she  thought,  but  without  being  able  to  impart 
to  her  writing  the  living  quality  of  her  speech.  It 
is  not  importance  of  subject-matter  that  makes  a 
work  great,  but  importance  of  the  subjectivity  of 
the  writer,  —  a  great  mind,  a  great  soul,  a  great  per- 
sonality. A  work  that  bears  the  imprint  of  these, 
that  is  charged  with  the  life  and  power  of  these, 
which  it  gives  forth  again  under  pressure,  is  alone 
entitled  to  high  rank. 

All  pure  literature  is  the  revelation  of  a  man.  In 
a  work  of  true  literary  art  the  subject-matter  has 
been  so  interpenetrated  and  vitalized  by  the  spirit 
or  personality  of  the  writer,  has  become  so  thor- 
oughly identified  with  it,  that  the  two  are  one  and 
inseparable,  and  the  style  is  the  man.  Works  in 
which  this  blending  and  identification,  through  emo- 
tion or  imagination,  of  the  author  with  his  subject 
has  not  taken  place,  or  has  taken  place  imperfectly, 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  89 

do  not  belong  to  pure  literature.  They  may  serve  a 
useful  purpose;  but  all  useful  purposes,  in  the  strict 
sense,  are  foreign  to  those  of  art,  which  means  for- 
eign to  the  spirit  that  would  live  in  the  whole,  that 
would  live  in  the  years  and  not  in  the  days,  in  time 
and  not  in  the  hour.  The  true  literary  artist  gives 
you  of  the  substance  of  his  mind;  not  merely  his 
thought  or  his  philosophy,  but  something  more  inti- 
mate and  personal  than  that.  It  is  not  a  tangible 
object  passed  from  his  hand  to  yours;  it  is  much 
more  like  a  transfusion  of  blood  from  his  veins  to 
yours.  Montaigne  gives  us  Montaigne,  —  the  most 
delightfully  garrulous  man  in  literature.  "  These  are 
fancies  of  my  own,"  he  says,  "by  which  I  do  not 
pretend  to  discover  things,  but  to  lay  open  myself." 
"Cut  these  sentences,"  says  Emerson,  "and  they 
bleed."  Matthew  Arnold  denied  that  Emerson  was 
a  great  writer;  but  we  cannot  account  for  the  charm 
and  influence  of  his  works,  it  seems  to  me,  on  any 
other  theory  than  that  he  has  at  least  this  mark  of 
the  great  writer:  he  gives  his  reader  of  his  own  sub- 
stance, he  saturates  his  page  with  the  high  and  rare 
quality  of  his  own  spirit.  Everything  he  published 
has  a  distinct  literary  value,  as  distinguished  from 
its  moral  or  religious  value.  The  same  may  be  said 
of  Arnold  himself:  else  we  should  not  care  much 
for  him.  It  is  a  particular  and  interesting  type  of 
man  that  speaks  and  breathes  in  every  sentence; 
his  style  is  vital  in  his  matter,  and  is  no  more  sepa- 


90  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

rable  from  it  than  the  style  of  silver  or  of  gold  is 
separable  from  those  metals. 

In  such  a  writer  as  Lecky  on  the  other  hand,  or 
as  Mill  or  Spencer,  one  does  not  get  this  same  subtle 
individual  flavor;  the  work  is  more  external,  more 
the  product  of  certain  special  faculties,  as  the  rea- 
son, the  memory,  the  understanding;  and  the  per- 
sonality of  the  author  is  not  so  intimately  involved. 
But  in  the  writer  with  the  creative  touch,  whether 
he  be  poet,  novelist,  historian,  critic,  essayist,  the 
chief  factor  in  the  product  is  always  his  own  per- 
sonality. 

Style,  then,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  am  here  using 
the  term,  implies  that  vital,  intimate,  personal  rela- 
tion of  the  man  to  his  language  by  which  he  makes 
the  words  his  own,  fills  them  with  his  own  quality, 
and  gives  the  reader  that  lively  sense  of  being  in 
direct  communication  with  a  living,  breathing,  men- 
tal and  spiritual  force.  The  writer  who  appears  to 
wield  his  language  as  an  instrument  or  a  tool,  some- 
thing exterior  to  himself,  who  makes  you  conscious 
of  his  vocabulary,  or  whose  words  are  the  garments 
and  not  the  tissue  of  his  thought,  has  not  style  in 
this  sense.  "Style,"  says  Schopenhauer,  "is  the 
physiognomy  of  the  mind,  and  a  safer  index  to  char- 
acter than  the  face."  This  definition  is  as  good  as 
any,  and  better  than  most,  because  it  implies  that 
identification  of  words  with  thoughts,  of  the  man 
with  his  subject,  which  is  the  secret  of  a  living  style. 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  91 

Hence  the  man  who  imitates  another  wears  a  mask, 
as  does  the  man  who  writes  in  a  language  to  which 
he  was  not  born. 


It  has  been  said  that  novel-writing  is  a  much 
finer  art  in  our  day  than  it  was  in  the  time  of  Scott, 
or  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  —  finer,  I  think,  be- 
cause it  is  in  the  hands  of  finer-strung,  more  dain- 
tily equipped  men;  but  would  one  dare  to  say  it  is 
a  greater  art  ?  One  may  admit  all  that  is  charged 
about  Scott's  want  of  style,  his  diffuseness  and  cum- 
brousness,  and  his  tedious  descriptions,  and  still 
justly  claim  for  him  the  highest  literary  honors.  He 
was  a  great  nature,  as  Goethe  said,  and  we  come  into 
vital  contact  with  that  great  nature  in  his  romances. 
He  was  not  deficient  in  the  larger  art  that  knows 
how  to  make  a  bygone  age  live  again  to  the  imagina- 
tion. He  himself  seems  to  have  deprecated  his  "  big 
bow-wow"  style  in  comparison  with  the  exquisite 
touches  of  Jane  Austen.  But  no  fineness  of  work- 
manship, no  deftness  of  handling,  can  make  up  for 
the  want  of  a  large,  rich,  copious  human  endowment. 
I  think  we  need  to  remember  this  when  we  compare 
unfavorably  such  men  as  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
with  the  cleverer  artists  of  our  own  day.  Scott  makes 
up  to  us  for  his  deficiencies  in  the  matter  of  style 
by  the  surpassing  human  interest  of  his  characters 
and  incidents,  their  relations  to  the  major  currents 


92  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

of  human  life.  His  scenes  fill  the  stage  of  history, 
his  personages  seem  adequate  to  great  events,  and 
the  whole  story  has  a  certain  historic  grandeur  and 
impressiveness.  There  is  no  mistaking  a  great  force, 
a  great  body,  in  literature  any  more  than  there  is  in 
the  physical  world;  in  Scott  we  have  come  upon  a 
great  river,  a  great  lake,  a  great  mountain,  and  we 
are  more  impressed  by  it  than  by  the  lesser  bodies, 
though  they  have  many  more  graces  and  pretti- 
nesses. 

Frederic  Harrison,  in  a  recent  address  on  style,  is 
cautious  in  recommending  the  young  writer  to  take 
thought  of  his  style.  Let  him  rather  take  thought 
of  what  he  has  to  say;  in  turning  his  ideal  values 
into  the  coin  of  current  speech  he  will  have  an  ex- 
ercise in  style.  If  he  has  no  ideal  values,  then  is  lit- 
erature barred  to  him.  Let  him  cultivate  his  sen- 
sibilities ;  make  himself,  if  possible,  more  quickly 
responsive  to  life  and  nature  about  him;  let  him  try 
to  see  more  clearly  and  feel  more  keenly,  and  con- 
nect his  vocabulary  with  his  most  radical  and  spon- 
taneous self.  Style  can  never  come  from  the  outside, 
—  from  consciously  seeking  it  by  imitating  the 
manner  of  favorite  authors.  It  comes,  if  at  all,  like 
the  bloom  upon  fruit,  or  the  glow  of  health  upon 
the  cheek,  from  an  inner  essential  harmony  and 
felicity. 

In  a  well-known  passage  Macaulay  tells  what 
happened  to  Miss  Burney  when  she  began  to  think 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  98 

about  her  style,  and  fell  to  imitating  Dr.  Johnson; 
how  she  lost  the  "charming  vivacity"  and  "per- 
fectly natural  unconsciousness  of  manner"  of  her 
youthful  writings,  and  became  modish  and  affected. 
She  threw  away  her  own  style,  which  was  a  "  toler- 
ably good  one,"  and  which  might  "  have  been  im- 
proved into  a  very  good  one,"  and  adopted  "  a  style 
in  which  she  could  attain  excellence  only  by  achiev- 
ing an  almost  miraculous  victory  over  nature  and 
over  habit.  She  could  cease  to  be  Fanny  Burney; 
it  was  not  so  easy  to  become  Samuel  Johnson." 

It  is  giving  too  much  thought  to  style  in  the  more 
external  and  verbal  aspects  of  it,  which  I  am  here 
considering,  that  leads  to  the  confounding  of  style 
with  diction,  and  that  gives  rise  to  the  "stylist." 
The  stylist  shows  you  what  can  be  done  with  mere 
Words.  He  is  the  foliage  plant  of  the  literary  flower 
garden.  An  English  college  professor  has  recently 
exploited  him  in  a  highly  wrought  essay  on  Style. 
Says  our  professor,  "  The  business  of  letters  is  two- 
fold, to  find  words  for  meaning  and  to  find  meaning 
for  words."  It  strikes  me  that  the  last  half  of  this 
proposition  is  not  true  of  the  serious  writer,  of  the 
man  who  has  something  to  say,  but  is  true  only  of 
what  is  called  the  stylist,  the  man  who  has  been  so 
often  described  as  one  having  nothing  to  say,  which 
he  says  extremely  well.  The  stylist's  main  effort 
is  a  verbal  one,  to  find  meaning  for  words ;  he  does 
not  wrestle  with  ideas,  but  with  terms  and  phrases; 


94  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

his  thoughts  are  word-begotten  and  are  often  as  un- 
substantial as  spectres  and  shadows. 

The  stylist  cultivates  words  as  the  florist  culti- 
vates flowers,  and  a  new  adjective  or  a  new  colloca- 
tion of  terms  is  to  him  what  a  new  chrysanthemum 
or  a  new  pansy  is  to  his  brother  of  the  forcing  house. 
He  is  more  an  European  product  than  an  American. 
London  and  Paris  abound  in  men  who  cultivate  the 
art  of  expression  for  its  own  sake,  who  study  how  to 
combine  words  so  as  to  tickle  the  verbal  sense  with- 
out much  reference  to  the  value  of  the  idea  expressed. 
Club  and  university  life,  excessive  library  culture  — 
a  sort  of  indoor  or  hothouse  literary  atmosphere 
—  foster  this  sort  of  thing. 

French  literature  can  probably  show  more  stylists 
than  English,  but  the  later  school  of  British  writers 
is  not  far  behind  in  the  matter  of  studied  expression. 
Professor  Raleigh,  from  whose  work  on  style  I 
quoted  above,  often  writes  forcibly  and  suggestively; 
but  one  cannot  help  but  feel,  on  finishing  his  little 
volume,  that  it  is  more  the  work  of  a  stylist  than  of  a 
thinker.  This  is  the  opening  sentence:  "Style,  the 
Latin  name  for  an  iron  pen,  has  come  to  designate 
the  art  that  handles,  with  ever  fresh  vitality  and 
wary  alacrity,  the  fluid  elements  of  speech."  Does 
not  one  faintly  scent  the  stylist  at  the  start  ?  Later 
on  he  says :  "  In  proportion  as  a  phrase  is  memor- 
able, the  words  that  compose  it  become  mutually 
adhesive,  losing  for  a  time  something  of  their  in- 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  95 

dividual  scope,  —  bringing  with  them,  if  they  be 
torn  away  too  quickly,  some  cumbrous  fragments 
of  their  recent  association."  Does  not  the  stylist 
stand  fully  confessed  here?  That  he  may  avoid 
these  "  cumbrous  fragments  "  that  will  stick  to  words 
when  you  suddenly  pull  them  up  by  the  roots,  "a 
sensitive  writer  is  often  put  to  his  shifts,  and  extorts, 
if  he  be  fortunate,  a  triumph  from  the  accident  of 
his  encumbrance."  The  lust  of  expression,  the  con- 
juring with  mere  words,  is  evident.  "  He  is  a  poor 
stylist,"  says  our  professor,  "  who  cannot  beg  half  a 
dozen  questions  in  a  single  epithet,  or  state  the  con- 
clusion he  would  fain  avoid  in  terms  that  startle  the 
senses  into  clamorous  revolt." 

What  it  is  in  one  that  starts  into  "  clamorous  re- 
volt "  at  such  verbal  gymnastics  as  are  shown  in 
the  following  sentences  I  shall  not  try  to  define,  but 
it  seems  to  me  it  is  something  real  and  legitimate. 
"A  slight  technical  implication,  a  faint  tinge  of 
archaism  in  the  common  turn  of  speech  that  you  em- 
ploy, and  in  a  moment  you  have  shaken  off  the  mob 
that  scours  the  rutted  highway,  and  are  addressing  a 
select  audience  of  ticket  holders  with  closed  doors. 
A  single  natural  phrase  of  peasant  speech,  a  direct 
physical  sense  given  to  a  word  that  genteel  parlance 
authorizes  readily  enough  in  its  metaphorical  sense, 
and  at  a  touch  you  have  blown  the  roof  off  the  draw- 
ing-room of  the  villa  and  have  set  its  obscure  inhab- 
itants wriggling  in  the  unaccustomed  sunshine." 


96  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

Amiel  says  of  Renan  that  science  was  his  material 
rather  than  his  object;  his  object  was  style.  Yet 
Renan  was  not  a  stylist  in  the  sense  in  which  I  am 
using  the  word.  His  main  effort  was  never  a  ver- 
bal one,  never  an  effort  to  find  meaning  for  words; 
he  was  intent  upon  his  subject;  his  style  was  vital 
in  his  thought,  and  never  took  on  airs  on  its  own 
account.  You  cannot  in  him  separate  the  artist  from 
the  thinker,  nor  give  either  the  precedence.  All 
writers  with  whom  literature  is  an  art  aim  at  style 
in  the  sense  that  they  aim  to  present  their  subject  in 
the  most  effective  form,  —  with  clearness,  freshness, 
force.  They  become  stylists  when  their  thoughts 
wait  upon  their  words,  or  when  their  thoughts  are 
word-begotten.  Such  writers  as  Gibbon,  De  Quin- 
cey,  Macaulay,  have  studied  and  elaborate  styles, 
but  in  each  the  matter  is  paramount  and  the  mind 
finds  something  solid  to  rest  upon. 

"The  chief  of  the  incommodities  imposed  upon 
the  writer,"  says  Professor  Raleigh,  is  "the  neces- 
sity at  all  times  and  at  all  costs  to  mean  something," 
or  to  find  meaning  for  words.  This  no  doubt  is  a 
hard  task.  The  trouble  begins  when -one  has  the 
words  first.  To  invoke  ideas  with  words  is  a  much 
more  difficult  experience  than  the  reverse  process. 
But  probably  all  true  writers  have  something  to  say 
before  they  have  the  desire  to  say  it,  and  in  propor- 
tion as  the  thought  is  vital  and  real  is  its  expression 
easy. 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  97 

When  I  meet  the  stylist,  with  his  straining  for  ver- 
bal effects,  I  love  to  recall  this  passage  from  Whit- 
man. "  The  great  poet,"  he  says,  "  swears  to  his  art, 
I  will  not  be  meddlesome.  I  will  not  have  in  my 
writing  any  elegance  or  effect  or  originality  to  hang 
in  the  way  between  me  and  the  rest,  like  curtains.  I 
will  have  nothing  hang  in  the  way,  not  the  richest 
curtains.  What  I  tell  I  tell  for  precisely  what  it  is. 
Let  who  may,  exalt  or  startle  or  fascinate  or  soothe;  I 
will  have  purpose,  as  health  or  heat  or  snow  has,  and 
be  as  regardless  of  observation.  What  I  experience 
or  portray  shall  go  from  my  composition  without  a 
shred  of  my  composition.  You  shall  stand  by  my 
side  and  look  in  the  mirror  with  me." 

This  is  the  same  as  saying  that  the  great  success 
in  writing  is  to  get  language  out  of  the  way  and  to 
put  your  mind  directly  to  the  reader's,  so  that  there 
be  no  veil  of  words  between  you.  If  the  reader  is 
preoccupied  with  your  words,  if  they  court  his  at- 
tention or  cloud  his  vision,  to  that  extent  is  the 
communication  imperfect.  In  some  of  Swinburne's 
poems  there  is  often  such  a  din  and  echo  of  rhyme 
and  alliteration  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  hear 
what  the  man  is  really  saying. 

To  darken  counsel  with  words  is  a  common  oc- 
currence. Words  are  like  lenses,  —  they  must  be 
arranged  in  just  such  a  way,  or  they  hinder  rather 
than  help  the  vision.  When  the  adjustment  is  as  it 
should  be,  the  lens  itself  is  invisible;  and  language  in 


98  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

the  hands  of  the  master  is  as  transparent.  Some  of 
the  more  recent  British  poets  affect  the  archaic,  the 
quaint,  the  eccentric,  in  language,  so  that  one's  at- 
tention is  almost  entirely  occupied  with  their  words. 
Reading  them  is  like  trying  to  look  through  a  pair 
of  spectacles  too  old  or  too  young  for  you,  or  with 
lenses  of  different  focus. 

But  has  not  style  a  value  in  and  of  itself  ?  As  in 
the  case  of  light,  its  value  is  in  the  revelation  it 
makes.  Its  value  is  to  conceal  itself,  to  lose  itself  in 
the  matter.  If  humility,  or  self-denial,  or  any  of  the 
virtues  becomes  conscious  of  itself  and  claims  credit 
for  its  own  sake,  does  it  not  that  moment  fall  from 
grace  ?  What  incomparable  style  in  the  passage  I 
have  quoted  from  Whitman  when  we  come  to  think 
of  it,  but  how  it  effaces  itself  and  is  of  no  account 
for  the  sake  of  the  idea  it  serves!  The  more  a 
writer's  style  humbles  itself,  the  more  it  is  exalted. 
There  is  nothing  true  in  religion  that  is  not  equally 
true  in  art.  Give  yourself  entirely.  All  selfish  and 
secondary  ends  are  of  the  devil.  Our  Calvinistic 
grandfathers,  who  fancied  themselves  willing  to  be 
damned  for  the  glory  of  God,  illustrate  the  devotion 
of  the  true  artist  to  his  ideal.  "  Consider  the  lilies 
of  the  field,  .  .  .  they  toil  not,  neither  do  they 
spin."  The  style  of  the  born  poet  or  artist  takes 
as  little  thought  of  itself,  and  is  the  spontaneous 
expression  of  the  same  indwelling  grace  and  neces- 
sity. 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN  99 

There  are  as  many  styles  as  there  are  moods  and 
tempers  in  men.  Words  may  be  used  so  as  to  give 
us  a  sense  of  vigor,  a  sense  of  freshness,  a  sense  of 
the  choice  and  scholarly,  or  of  the  dainty  and  exclu- 
sive, or  of  the  polished  and  elaborate,  or  of  heat  or 
cold,  or  of  any  other  quality  known  to  life.  Every 
work  of  genius  has  its  own  physiognomy  —  sad, 
cheerful,  frowning,  yearning,  determined,  medita- 
tive. This  book  has  the  face  of  a  saint;  that  of  a 
scholar  or  a  seer.  Here  is  the  feminine,  there  the 
masculine  face.  One  has  the  clerical  face,  one  the 
judicial.  Each  appeals  to  us  according  to  our  tem- 
peraments and  mental  predilections.  Who  shall  say 
which  style  is  the  best?  What  can  be  better  than 
the  style  of  Huxley  for  his  purpose,  —  sentences 
level  and  straight  like  a  hurled  lance;  or  than  Emer- 
son's for  his  purpose,  —  electric  sparks,  the  sudden, 
unexpected  epithet  or  tense,  audacious  phrase,  that 
gives  the  mind  a  wholesome  shock;  or  than  Gibbon's 
for  his  purpose,  —  a  style  like  solid  masonry,  every 
sentence  cut  four  square,  and  his  work,  as  Carlyle 
said  to  Emerson,  a  splendid  bridge,  connecting  the 
ancient  world  with  the  modern;  or  than  De  Quin- 
cey's  for  his  purpose,  —  a  discursive,  roundabout 
style,  herding  his  thoughts  as  a  collie  dog  herds 
sheep;  or  than  Arnold's  for  his  academic  spirit,  —  a 
style  like  cut  glass;  or  than  Whitman's  for  his  con- 
tinental spirit,  —  the  processional,  panoramic  style 


100  STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

that  gives  the  sense  of  mass  and  multitude?  Certain 
things  we  may  demand  of  every  man's  style,  —  that 
it  shall  do  its  work,  that  it  shall  touch  the  quick.  To 
be  colorless  like  Arnold  is  good,  and  to  have  color 
like  Ruskin  is  good;  to  be  lofty  and  austere  like  the 
old  Latin  and  Greek  authors  is  good,  and  to  be  play- 
ful and  discursive  like  Dr.  Holmes  is  good;  to  be 
condensed  and  epigrammatic  like  Bacon  pleases, 
and  to  be  flowing  and  copious  like  Macaulay  pleases. 
Within  certain  limits  the  manner  that  is  native  to 
the  man,  the  style  that  is  a  part  of  himself,  is  what 
wears  best.  What  we  do  not  want  in  any  style  is 
hardness,  glitter,  tumidity,  superfetation ,  unreality. 
In  treating  of  nature  or  outdoor  themes,  let  the 
style  have  limpidness,  sweetness,  freshness;  in  criti- 
cism let  it  have  dignity,  lucidity,  penetration;  in 
history  let  it  have  mass,  sweep,  comprehension;  in 
all  things  let  it  have  vitality,  sincerity,  and  genuine- 
ness. 


SUGGESTIVENESS  > 

Y 1 1HERE  is  a  quality  that  adheres  to  one  man's 
_A_  writing  or  speaking,  and  not  to  another's,  that 
we  call  suggestiveness,  —  something  that  warms  and 
stimulates  the  mind  of  the  reader  or  hearer,  quite 
apart  from  the  amount  of  truth  or  information  di- 
rectly conveyed. 

It  is  a  precious  literary  quality,  not  easy  of  defini- 
tion or  description.  It  involves  quality  of  mind, 
mental  and  moral  atmosphere,  points  of  view,  and 
maybe,  racial  elements.  Not  every  page  or  every 
book  carries  latent  meaning;  rarely  does  any  sen- 
tence of  a  writer  float  deeper  than  it  shows. 

Thus,  of  the  great  writers  of  English  literature, 
Dr.  Johnson  is,  to  me,  the  least  suggestive,  while 
Bacon  is  one  of  the  most  suggestive.  Hawthorne  is 
undoubtedly  the  most  suggestive  of  our  romancers; 
he  has  the  most  atmosphere  and  the  widest  and  most 
alluring  horizon.  Emerson  is  the  most  suggestive  of 
our  essayists,  because  he  has  the  deepest  ethical  and 
prophetic  background.  His  page  is  full  of  moral 
electricity,  so  to  speak,  which  begets  a  state  of  elec- 
tric excitement  in  his  reader's  mind.  Whitman  is  the 

1  From  Literary  Valvei. 


102  SUGGESTIVENESS 

most  suggestive  of  our  poets ;  he  elaborates  the  least 
and  gives  us  in  profusion  the  buds  and  germs  of 
poetry.  A  musical  composer  once  said  to  me  that 
Whitman  stimulated  him  more  than  Tennyson,  be- 
cause he  left  more  for  him  to  do,  —  he  abounded  in 
hints  and  possibilities  that  the  musician's  mind 
eagerly  seized. 

This  quality  is  not  related  to  ambiguity  of  phrase 
or  to  cryptic  language  or  to  vagueness  and  obscurity. 
It  goes,  or  may  go,  with  perfect  lucidity,  as  in  Mat- 
thew Arnold  at  his  best,  while  it  is  rarely  present  in 
the  pages  of  Herbert  Spencer.  Spencer  has  great 
clearness  and  compass,  but  there  is  nothing  resonant 
in  his  style,  —  nothing  that  stimulates  the  imagina- 
tion. He  is  a  great  workman,  but  the  metal  he  works 
in  is  not  of  the  kind  called  precious. 

The  late  roundabout  and  enigmatical  style  of 
Henry  James  is  far  less  fruitful  in  his  readers'  minds 
than  his  earlier  and  more  direct  one,  or  than  the 
limpid  style  of  his  compeer,  Mr.  Howells.  The 
indirect  and  elliptical  method  may  undoubtedly  be 
so  used  a.  to  stimulate  the  mind;  at  the  same  time 
there  may  be  a  kind  of  inconclusiveness  and  beating 
around  the  bush  that  is  barren  and  wearisome.  Upon 
the  page  of  the  great  novelist  there  fall,  more  or  less 
distinct,  all  the  colors  of  the  spectrum  of  human 
life;  but  Mr.  James  in  his  later  works  seems  intent 
only  upon  the  invisible  rays  of  the  spectrum,  and  his 
readers  grope  in  the  darkness  accordingly. 


SUGGESTIVENESS  103 

In  the  world  of  experience  and  observation  the 
suggestiveness  of  things  is  enhanced  by  veils,  con- 
cealments, half  lights,  flowing  lines.  The  twilight 
is  more  suggestive  than  the  glare  of  noonday,  a  roll- 
ing field  than  a  lawn,  a  winding  road  than  a  straight 
one.  In  literature  perspective,  indirection,  under- 
statement, side  glimpses,  have  equal  value;  a  vocab- 
ulary that  is  warm  from  the  experience  of  the  writer, 
sentences  that  start  a  multitude  of  images,  that 
abound  in  the  concrete  and  the  specific,  that  shun 
vague  generalities,  —  with  these  goes  the  power  of 
suggestiveness. 

Beginnings,  outlines,  summaries,  are  suggestive, 
while  the  elaborated,  the  highly  wrought,  the  per- 
fected afford  us  a  different  kind  of  pleasure.  The 
art  that  fills  and  satisfies  us  has  one  excellence,  and 
the  art  that  stimulates  and  makes  us  ahungry  has 
another.  All  beginnings  in  nature  afford  us  a  pe- 
culiar pleasure.  The  early  spring  with  its  hints  and 
dim  prophecies,  the  first  earth  odors,  the  first  robin 
or  song  sparrow,  the  first  furrow,  the  first  tender 
skies,  the  first  rainbow,  the  first  wild  flower,  the 
dropping  bud  scales,  the  awakening  voices  in  the 
marshes,  —  all  these  things  touch  and  move  us  in 
a  way  that  later  developments  in  the  season  do  not. 
What  meaning,  too,  in  the  sunrise  and  the  sunset, 
in  the  night  with  its  stars,  the  sea  with  its  tides  and 
currents,  the  morning  with  its  dews,  autumn  with 
its  bounty,  winter  with  its  snows,  the  desert  with  its 


104  SUGGESTIVENESS 

sands,  —  in  everything  in  the  germ  and  in  the  bud, 
—  in  parasites,  suckers,  blights,  in  floods,  tempests, 
droughts!  The  winged  seeds  carry  thoughts,  the 
falling  leaves  make  us  pause,  the  clinging  burrs  have 
a  tongue,  the  pollen  dust,  not  less  than  meteoric  dust, 
conveys  a  hint  of  the  method  of  nature. 

Some  things  and  events  in  our  daily  experience  are 
more  typical,  and  therefore  more  suggestive,  than 
others.  Thus  the  sower  striding  across  the  ploughed 
field  is  a  walking  allegory,  or  parable.  Indeed  the 
whole  life  of  the  husbandman,  —  his  first-hand  rela- 
tion to  things,  his  ploughing,  his  planting,  his  fer- 
tilizing, his  draining,  his  pruning,  his  grafting,  his 
uprootings,  his  harvestings,  his  separating  of  the 
wheat  from  the  chaff,  and  the  tares  from  the  wheat, 
his  fencing  his  field  with  the  stones  and  boulders 
that  hindered  his  plough  or  cumbered  his  sward,  his 
making  the  wilderness  blossom  as  the  rose,  —  all 
these  things  are  pleasant  to  contemplate  because  in 
them  there  is  a  story  within  a  story,  we  translate 
the  facts  into  higher  truths. 

In  like  manner,  the  shepherd  with  his  flocks,  the 
seaman  with  his  compass  and  rudder,  the  potter  with 
his  clay,  the  weaver  with  his  warp  and  woof,  the 
sculptor  with  his  marble,  the  painter  with  his  can- 
vas and  pigments,  the  builder  with  his  plans  and 
scaffoldings,  the  chemist  with  his  solvents  and  pre- 
cipitants,  the  surgeon  with  his  scalpel  and  antisep- 
tics, the  lawyer  with  his  briefs,  the  preacher  with 


SUGGESTIVENESS  105 

his  text,  the  fisherman  with  his  nets,  —  all  are  more 
or  less  symbolical  and  appeal  to  the  imagination. 

In  both  prose  and  poetry,  there  is  the  suggestive- 
ness  of  language  used  in  a  vivid,  imaginative  way, 
and  the  suggestiveness  of  words  redolent  of  human 
association,  words  of  deep  import,  as  friend,  home, 
love,  marriage. 

To  me  Shakespeare's  sonnets  are  the  most  sugges- 
tive sonnets  in  the  language,  because  they  so  abound 
in  words,  images,  allusions  drawn  from  real  life; 
they  are  the  product  of  a  mind  vividly  acted  upon 
by  near-by  things,  that  uses  language  steeped  in  the 
common  experience  of  mankind.  The  poet  drew  his 
material  not  from  the  strange  and  the  remote,  but, 
as  it  were,  from  the  gardens  and  thoroughfares  of 
life.  Does  not  that  poetry  or  prose  work  touch  us 
the  most  nearly  that  deals  with  that  with  which  we 
are  most  familiar?  One  thing  that  separates  the 
minor  poet  from  the  major  is  that  the  thoughts  and 
words  of  the  minor  poet  are  more  of  the  nature  of 
asides,  or  of  the  exceptional ;  he  does  not  take  in  the 
common  and  universal ;  we  are  not  familiar  with  the 
points  of  view  that  so  agitate  him;  and  he  has  not 
the  power  to  make  them  real  to  us.  I  read  poems 
every  day  that  provoke  the  thought,  "  Well,  that  is 
all  news  to  me.  I  do  not  know  that  heaven  or  that 
earth,  those  men  or  those  women,"  —  all  is  so  shad- 
owy, fantastic,  and  unreal.  But  when  you  enter  the 
world  of  the  great  poets  you  find  yourself  upon  solid 


106  SUGGESTIVENESS 

ground;  the  sky  and  the  earth,  and  the  things  in 
them  and  upon  them,  are  what  you  have  always 
known,  and  not  for  a  moment  are  you  called  upon  to 
breathe  in  a  vacuum,  or  to  reverse  your  upright  posi- 
tion to  see  the  landscape.  Dante  even  makes  hell 
as  tangible  and  real  as  the  objects  of  our  senses,  if 
not  more  so. 

Then  there  is  the  suggestiveness  or  kindling  power 
of  pregnant,  compact  sentences,  —  type  thoughts, 
compendious  phrases,  —  vital  distinctions  or  gen- 
eralizations, such  as  we  find  scattered  through  litera- 
ture, as  when  De  Quincey  says  of  the  Roman  that 
he  was  great  in  the  presence  of  man,  never  in  the 
presence  of  nature;  or  his  distinction  between  the 
literature  of  power  and  the  literature  of  knowledge, 
or  similar  illuminating  distinctions  in  the  prose  of 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Arnold,  Goethe, 
Lessing.  Arnold's  dictum  that  poetry  is  a  criticism 
of  life,  is  suggestive,  because  it  sets  you  thinking  to 
verify  or  to  disprove  it.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  not 
what  one  would  call  a  suggestive  writer,  yet  the  fol- 
lowing sentence,  which  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell  has 
lately  made  use  of,  makes  a  decided  ripple  in  one's 
mind:  "I  have  learnt  from  experience  that  many 
false  opinions  may  be  exchanged  for  true  ones  with- 
out in  the  least  altering  the  habits  of  mind  of  which 
false  opinions  are  the  result."  In  a  new  home  writer 
whose  first  books  are  but  a  year  or  two  old,  I  find 
deeply  suggestive  sentences  on  nearly  every  page. 


SUGGESTIVENESS  107 

Here  are  two  or  three  of  them :  "  In  your  inmost 
soul  you  are  as  well  suited  to  the  whole  cosmical 
order  and  every  part  of  it  as  to  your  own  body.  You 
belong  here.  Did  you  suppose  that  you  belonged  to 
some  other  world  than  this,  or  that  you  belonged 
nowhere  at  all,  just  a  waif  on  the  bosom  of  the  eter- 
nities ?  .  .  .  Conceivably  He  might  have  flung  you 
into  a  world  that  was  unrelated  to  you,  and  might 
have  left  you  to  be  acclimated  at  your  own  risk; 
but  you  happen  to  know  that  this  is  not  the  case. 
You  have  lived  here  always;  this  is  the  ancestral 
demesne;  for  ages  and  ages  you  have  looked  out  of 
these  same  windows  upon  the  celestial  landscape 
and  the  star-deeps.  You  are  at  home."  "  How  per- 
verse and  pathetic  the  desires  of  the  animals!  But 
they  all  get  what  they  ask  for,  —  long  necks  and 
trunks,  flapping  ears  and  branching  horns  and  cor- 
rugated hides,  anything,  if  only  they  will  believe  in 
life  and  try."  1 

The  intuitional  and  affirmative  writers,  to  which 
class  our  new  author  belongs,  and  the  most  notable 
example  of  which,  in  this  country,  was  Emerson, 
are,  as  a  rule,  more  suggestive  than  the  clearly  de- 
monstrating and  logical  writers.  A  challenge  to  the 
soul  seems  to  mean  more  than  an  appeal  to  the 
reason;  an  audacious  affirmation  often  irradiates 
the  mind  in  a  way  that  a  logical  sequence  of  thought 
does  not.  Science  rarely  suggests  more  than  it  says; 

1  The  Religion  of  Democracy.     By  Charles  Ferguson. 


108  SUGGESTIVENESS 

but  in  the  hands  of  an  imaginative  man  like  Maeter- 
linck a  certain  order  of  facts  in  natural  history 
becomes  fraught  with  deepest  meaning,  as  may 
be  witnessed  in  his  wonderful  "  Life  of  the  Bee," 
—  one  of  the  most  enchanting  and  poetic  contribu- 
tions to  natural  history  ever  made.  Darwin's  work 
upon  the  earthworm,  and  upon  the  cross  fertiliza- 
tion of  flowers,  in  the  same  way  seems  to  convey 
more  truth  to  the  reader  than  is  warranted  by  the 
subject. 

The  writer  who  can  touch  the  imagination  has 
the  key,  at  least  one  key,  to  suggestiveness.  This 
power  often  goes  with  a  certain  vagueness  and  in^ 
definiteness,  as  in  the  oft-quoted  lines  from  one  of 
Shakespeare's  sonnets :  — 

"the  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come  ;  " 

a  very  suggestive,  but  not  a  clearly  intelligible  pas- 
sage. 

Truth  at  the  centre,  straightly  put,  excites  the 
mind  in  one  way,  and  truth  at  the  surface,  or  at  the 
periphery  of  the  circle,  indirectly  put,  excites  it  in 
another  way  and  for  other  reasons;  just  as  a  light 
in  a  dark  place,  which  illuminates,  appeals  to  the 
eye  in  a  different  way  from  the  light  of  day  falling 
through  vapors  or  colored  glass,  wherein  objects 
become  softened  and  illusory. 

A  common  word  may  be  so  used  as  to  have  an 


SUGGESTIVENESS  109 

unexpected  richness  of  meaning,  as  when  Coleridge 
speaks  of  those  books  that  "  find "  us ;  or  Shake- 
speare of  the  "  marriage  of  true  minds,"  or  Whitman 
of  the  autumn  apple  hanging  "indolent-ripe"  on 
the  tree.  Probably  that  language  is  the  most  sug- 
gestive that  is  the  most  concrete,  that  is  drawn  most 
largely  from  the  experience  of  life,  that  savors  of 
real  things.  The  Saxon  English  of  Walton  or  Bar- 
row is  more  suggestive  than  the  latinized  English  of 
Johnson  or  Gibbon. 

Indeed,  the  quality  I  am  speaking  of  is  quite 
exceptional  in  the  eighteenth-century  writers.  It  is 
much  more  abundant  in  the  writers  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  It  goes  much  more  with  the  vernacu- 
lar style,  the  homely  style,  than  with  the  polished 
academic  style. 

With  the  stream  of  English  literature  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  has  mingled  a  current  of  German 
thought  and  mysticism,  and  this  has  greatly  height- 
ened its  power  of  suggestiveness  both  in  poetry  and 
in  prose.  It  is  not  in  Byron  or  Scott  or  Campbell 
or  Moore  or  Macaulay  or  Irving,  but  it  is  in  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  and  Landor  and  Carlyle  and 
Ruskin  and  Blake  and  Tennyson  and  Browning  and 
Emerson  and  Whitman,  —  a  depth  and  richness  of 
spiritual  and  emotional  background  that  the  wits  of 
Pope's  and  Johnson's  times  knew  not  of.  It  seems 
as  if  the  subconscious  self  played  a  much  greater 
part  in  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century  than 


110  SUGGESTIVENESS 

of  the  eighteenth,  probably  because  this  term  has 
been  recently  added  to  our  psychology. 

As  a  rule  it  may  be  said  that  the  more  a  writer 
condenses,  the  more  suggestive  his  work  will  be. 
There  is  a  sort  of  mechanical  equivalent  between 
the  force  expended  in  compacting  a  sentence  and  the 
force  or  stimulus  it  imparts  again  to  the  reader's 
mind.  A  diffuse  writer  is  rarely  or  never  a  sug- 
gestive one.  Poetry  is,  or  should  be,  more  sugges- 
tive than  prose,  because  it  is  the  result  of  a  more 
compendious  and  sublimating  process.  .The  mind 
of  the  poet  is  more  tense,  he  uses  language  under 
greater  pressure  of  emotion  than  the  prose  writer, 
whose  medium  of  expression  gives  his  mind  more 
play-room.  The  poet  often  succeeds  in  focusing 
his  meaning  or  emotion  in  a  single  epithet,  and 
he  alone  gives  us  the  resounding,  unforgettable 
line.  There  are  pregnant  sentences  in  all  the  great 
prose  writers  ;  there  are  immortal  lines  only  in  the 
poets. 

Whitman  said  the  word  he  would  himself  use  as 
most  truly  descriptive  of  his  "  Leaves  of  Grass " 
was  the  word  suggestiveness.  "I  round  and  finish 
little,  if  anything;  and  could  not  consistently  with 
my  scheme.  The  reader  will  always  have  his  or  her 
part  to  do,  just  as  much  as  I  have  had  mine.  I  seek 
less  to  state  or  display  my  theme  or  thought,  and 
more  to  bring  you,  reader,  into  the  atmosphere  of 
the  theme  or  thought  —  there  to  pursue  your  own 


SUGGESTIVENESS  111 

flight."  These  sentences  themselves  are  suggestive, 
because  they  bring  before  the  mind  a  variety  of 
definite  actions,  as  finishing  a  thing,  displaying  a 
thing,  doing  your  part,  pursuing  your  own  flight, 
and  yet  the  idea  conveyed  has  a  certain  subtlety  and 
elusiveness.  The  suggestiveness  of  his  work  as  a 
whole  probably  lies  in  its  blending  of  realism  and 
mysticism,  and  in  the  art  of  it  running  parallel  to  or 
in  some  way  tallying  with  the  laws  and  processes  of 
nature.  It  stimulates  thought  and  criticism  as  few 
modern  works  do. 

Of  course  the  suggestiveness  of  any  work  —  poem, 
picture,  novel,  essay  —  depends  largely  upon  what 
we  bring  to  it;  whether  we  bring  a  kindred  spirit 
or  an  alien  one,  a  full  mind  or  an  empty  one,  an  alert 
sense  or  a  dull  one.  If  you  have  been  there,  so  to 
speak,  if  you  have  passed  through  the  experience 
described,  if  you  have  known  the  people  portrayed, 
if  you  have  thought,  or  tried  to  think,  the  thoughts 
the  author  exploits,  the  work  will  have  a  deeper 
meaning  to  you  than  to  one  who  is  a  stranger  to 
these  things.  The  best  books  make  us  acquainted 
with  our  own,  —  they  help  us  to  find  ourselves.  No 
book  calls  forth  the  same  responses  from  two  differ- 
ent types  of  mind.  The  wind  does  not  awaken 
aeolian-harp  tones  from  cornstalks.  No  man  is  a 
hero  to  his  valet.  It  is  the  deep  hollows  and  passes 
of  the  mountains  that  give  back  your  voice  in  pro- 
longed reverberations.  The  tides  are  in  the  sea,  not 


112  SUGGESTIVENESS 

in  the  lakes  and  ponds.  Words  of  deep  import  do 
not  mean  much  to  a  child.  The  world  of  books  is 
under  the  same  law  as  these  things.  What  any 
given  work  yields  us  depends  largely  upon  what  we 
bring  to  it. 


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